Guys,
To reiterate, we have been boiling down all the discussions on a variety of forums and on Facebook and taking a hard look at our cost, price vs. capability. Originally, over a year ago this was going to be a system based largely around the architecture of the Beaglebone Black. At this time we had discussed pricing in the $150-$180 range. Soon after this, Steve Woita decided we need to do something that's not been done before and make a consumer product that is FPGA enabled as this would give immediate development paths to a wide variety of home brew game developers who could continue making games like they know how, for the systems they are familiar with and have a no-cost port of those games onto RVGS. Hopefully, bringing these games to a bigger audience allowing them to make more money so they can keep making more games. I hope none of you can argue about that
Next, since we don't want the success of RVGS to lie only in the hands of smaller homebrew game developers who are making incredible retro games for the classic systems, we wanted to make RVGS capable of playing the best of today's retro inspired games coming from a great group of Indie developers around the world. And just because these games look RETRO, they are in fact, quite large, many in the 1-2GB range. So we have had to take considerable time and effort to design a system that will play a wide variety of games coming from a wide variety of developers using a variety of oldschool to newschool programing techniques and using today's mostly inefficient game making suites like Unity and Game Maker.
RVGS will also have its own native core and tool chain that developers can work with as well. This is something still being worked on and SDKs will be available soon after the campaign ends. The bottom line is RVGS will have more than enough ways for devs to bring their games onto the system. That has always been the goal of my hardware team who by the way have been designing video gaming hardware and/or software for their entire careers.
We have addressed the flash issue and will be able to use masked roms up to a max game size of around 128 MB which will cover lots of ground. But, for games larger than that we have been working on other higher capacity storage options that will make our games last a lifetime. But its been extremely challenging working with today's technology which is largely becoming more and more disposable. Believe me we have looked at every option there is and worked with the largest electronics distributors and Flash manufactures directly to determine the best options available for our long term storage needs.
As far as whether or not we are leaving the FPGA inside RVGS. The answer is YES. Removing this part of our hardware will significantly reduce the value and capability of this machine. We have yet to announce, but will have a variety of inexpensive cartridge adapters that will allow you to play your original games (and using your original classic gaming controllers) from your collections in RVGS using only the highest quality, read that lots of GOLD, cartridge connectors made here in Southern California. You won't have to worry about sticking in your prized copy of Air Raid into the RVGS cartridge slot. AND RVGS will be a great system to play all the existing newer and upcoming homebrew titles for Atari 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision and NES (possible 16-bit consoles in the future, however, no reliable cores for these have been made yet). This is all a by-product of having an FPGA enabled system. Imagine plugging in a USB keyboard and programming and saving your programs like this was an Amiga computer? This will all be possible with RVGS and its FPGA component. Not to mention this FPGA will be used by game developers to do things never seen before in a video game. As they become more and more familiar with what we are providing them, you will see games here that you won't see anywhere else.
We are making a product for the ages and one that will have loads of value straight from the box. RVGS will be made right here in Southern California with only the highest quality parts on the market. Give us the time to prove what this will do and I am sure eventually, all of you will want to have this sitting beside your favorite game cartridge based consoles from yesterday. Regardless of what you all might think, we have spent tons of money, time and effort getting to this point.
Carry on . . . . . . .