Paladin of the Pegasos
Posts: 1424 from 2003/4/13
Quote:
KennyR wrote:
It's the classic Catch-22 situation encountered by every retro hardware device. Nostalgia is a very personal ideal.
Some fanboys won't accept it unless it has all the limitations of the original, plus a few upgrades. "How is this anything like Amiga/C64/Spectrum/etc??" Many customers of course won't accept it if it doesn't come with HDMI. And mainstream will piss all over it.
I find the retro crowd, in general, not worth bothering about. You could sweat for years providing them with their wish list only for them to play with it for 15 minutes and decide their poor experience was more to do with you than an overly-nostalgic recollection.
I mostly agree with you here, except on the last paragraph. Jens/Icomp, like him or hate him, always seems to sell out of stock. The Turbo Chameleon sold out too (but no published numbers AFAIK). The Apollo Team has pumped out over 4k Vampire boards. While not getting rich, it seems enough to make it worth their while.
I do agree overall that the retro crowd is a fickle bunch. Presented a reasonably priced impressive product, a vocal number of them will whine and not let it go. They don't just say "not for me", they'll go whine anywhere they possibly can. I just think companies are correct to ignore the noise. Vampire sales show to me there are enough of us who want such a product.
