Quote Originally Posted by Speed Racer View Post
So if a company were to actually try and make another cartridge based console what would be the best way to go about it from a technical standpoint?
The big thing would be to develop the system parameters and chipset first. Making another emulation machine is just lumping yourself into a crowded market. Create whatever hardware first. Have a functioning unit so that you can have development specs for developers to create unique content. This is expensive, and the reason that crowdfunding isn't always a good route for technology. Even major retail consoles leave little if any room for profit initially, but still sell even sometimes at a loss in order to get units into homes in hopes to make the money back in licensing fees and software sales. It's conceptually like building a PC with the desired parameters, then paring it down to a closed circuit board that consolidates the relevant components in an economic fashion.

That's not a quick, easy process, and should probably not happen without a real vision for what the console is going to be so that the build can be focused. It's not a simple hobbyist thing to do, and would a time consuming, expensive process in terms of man hours, and having unique parameters makes a situation that isn't so accessible to indie developers without a known toolset.

Point is, you'd really need to be able to fund the development of the chipset and prototype without any crowdfunding, and be able to make development tools available to software teams. The crowdfunding would be used in order to fund actual production runs and distribution, not development, and then sales revenue should be used to market and maintain necessary production.


As far as how it's a scam, there's two groups to consider. First and most obvious, the potential consumer. There is not a financial scam in that sense, but rather an attempt at a scam in that they have tried to create the illusion of having a working prototype, which Kickstarter requires. Should they have successfully convinced Kickstarter with these "prototypes," they would have been taking crowdfunding to fund a false product. As of yet, though, the public has been less scammed and more insulted by the attempt.

Secondly, though, you have developers and other external partners, whose brand identity is a valuable asset in marketing products. Any time they have spent developing for, helping to market, or making software available to this project is a loss of time, money, and brand value. Good faith with the customer base is invaluable to a small developer, and damages by this association due to the practices of the Chameleon team who are using their name and software to hype a fraudulent project scams the developer.

Overall, the whole thing has basically been an insult to consumers and a scam to their partners.