Quote Originally Posted by Tanooki View Post
I think it's both groups. A clone system rolling over the $100 mark is distasteful to a good many people as in the end, it's still a knockoff, even if it has perks since it just a ROM dumping emulator.
I obviously am not very happy with the price change due the the fact that I took people's money a long time ago and now have to go back and ask for more. However when I first heard about this project I expected it to be in the $130 - $150 range and was honestly disappointed when I heard it was $99.99. Not because I want people to have to pay more, but because I thought at $100 it build quality would be poor and its profit margin would be terrible. I was correct on the latter. The profit margin at $99.99 for retailers was absolutely terrible and would have allowed for almost zero flexibility in the pricing. Some smaller retailers were even saying that would have to charge over MSRP for it to be worth their while to carry the product. Just to be clear, not just the MSRP was raised. The wholesale price was as well.

I am not happy with how Hyperkin handled most of this and if you saw some of my correspondence with them its very obvious. However most of what they did was more of a case of underestimating. I don't think anything Hyperkin has done regarding the RetroN5 was done to purposely screw anyone over. The unfortunate side effect is that their poor planning has lead to people feeling that way. I have had to deal with this myself on a smaller scale. When I decided to take pre-orders for the SD2SNES Deluxe Edition I thought since the price was so high that there would really be little interest. So I only put 35 pre-orders up. Well unfortunately when the pre-order was finally listed there were so many trying to place orders at the same time is crashed the site. All 35 pre-orders sold in less than 5 minutes, but with the site crashing many people who probably go there before others didn't get to place their orders. We had angry people on our FaceBook page, some personally insulting me. I felt like a chump.

I am not defending all of Hyperkin's decisions, but at the original price point it would have really forced out many of the smaller retailers. I know some people think charging over $100 for a "clone" is crazy. I personally disagree. I have always said I felt there was a market for a higher-end clone assuming its build quality, feature set, and compatibility justified the price point. Obviously some of this still needs to be seen and that's just my opinion of course. Only time will tell.