Sorry for the WoT, I've been following this from the earliest teases via facebook and AtariAge threads.
Seriously. How many people are regulars in the Atari Jaguar forums? Take that number, cut it in half, cut it in half again and that's your market for this console. I can't imagine anyone else being sold on this. It's purely a novelty for Jaguar collectors.
There are maybe a few dozen active full-timers posting regularly in jaguar forums these days. We've been discussing the proposed system (despite having little to go on for most of the time). You might be surprised to learn how many copies of games they are projecting to sell... one comment posted had them suggest the
first thousand copies might have exclusive cart colours before all remaining copies revert to a standard colour. That raised a few eyebrows...
Other points of note: we saw the guys suggest software was being worked on by devs many months ago, right from the earliest hints of what the system might be. Then, later we saw them post regarding contacting the holders of the Amiga IP to arrange some kind of deal to license that hardware somehow. It all seemed a little conflicting as that comment seemed to suggest the hardware itself wasn't fixed. Later, when we continued to ask for more details, it was announced that the system would be FPGA-based, reconfigurable - the cartridge would not only contain the game code and assets, but would transform the hardware from SNES to NeoGeo, to Mega Drive to... whatever system it was that the dev required to suit their expertise and knowledge. So all "retro" devs could target their hardware and gain access to some kind of eager, captive audience, ready to buy up physical copies of titles. That's where I lost interest somewhat, it seemed so pie-in-the-sky.
I'm not sure how they managed to get from the original idea of a "new retro" system and ended up with a frankenstein simulation/emulation/monetisation box, but damn, it really seems to have bypassed the very reason people go to the effort to produce and put out games for long-dead systems and jumped staright to the money/box/shelf/revolving glass cabinet collecting-for-collectings-sake kind of angle, that to me at least seemed on the icky side of cash-grab.
Eh, this'll be a pretty fun novelty for a small audience. I'm sure it'll get some weird shmups or one-offs like Pier Solar before it's all said and done.
Can't see it personally. Nobody is going to put the effort in to target a soulless system, a system that has no identity of its own and lacks all the emotional and nostaligic draw that real retro systems enjoy. Yes, they might convince a few devs to allow them to put out their existing titles if they can provide suitably accurate cores for whatever it is their fpga of choice happens to be. The one game I've seen so far is a SNES title, the video claimed it was originally planned for that stystem. But now it seems it might very well still be a SNES game and the plan is to simulate a SNES to present it. It does possibly open the door to allowing "souped-up" simulations and bastardisations of old hardware, but then you're in that murky area where what you're doing isn't true to what you might have originally got into making these games for in the first place and therefore not for everyone.
If you're going for actual hard limitations, why not, as a developer, just make a new Genesis/SNES/NG/whatever game? Games that could run on already-manufactured hardware, hardware that has clone machines out there, hardware that's been emulated so you could also easily do multiplatform releases?
It's the lack of hard limitations and and fixed spec for exploring and exploiting that turned me off most. Working within confines can force all kinds of great things to the surface, can be rewarding and can lead to healthy competition as teams try to one-up the achievements of one another like the old demoscene days. This box seems to be ignoring all of that in favour of something that attempts to be all things to all men.
I don't understand how this will be sustainable or worthwhile for a large enough market. I bet it will make millions on Kickstarter and then no one will hear about it again.
Cynical me sees the investment in the moulds for producing replacement jaguar console shells and cartridge shells as a banker, something that would at least recoup an initial investment and more (see sales numbers at AtariAge thread for shells). The kickstarter retrovgs might work out for them, it might not, but for the guys doing it no doubt worth a punt either way.
How is it that they can't give details on what this thing is running on?
Gamester81 is involved in this project and has been working on a game for it.
So if anyone wants to see what the graphics look like on this thing,
click here...
if you dare!
I'm not kidding, it looks like what you would get on an N-Gage.
Ah, now that looks like the SNES game I mentioned. The AtariAge threads (can't easily link as on tablet and not got my account set up on here) one in hardware section, one jaguar forum, that's where they revealed how they intend the setup to work - the reconfigurable fpga console simulator.
BTW, a hardware guy who designed our Jaguar flash carts and gang flasher made an observation on this:
Apparently, the placement of the 2 subd-9 and USB sockets in the mockup seem impossibly close to one another given the position of the power LED (original Jaguar LED positioning) and the footprint they would take up inside.