26 replies to this topic

[DickNixonArisen]

Someone else asked about the market potential for an atari product in another thread and I thought this question might be relevant to him. Now I'm curious too. Also, any idea of the number of Krok/Cuttle carts sold?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

IIRC the Krokodile Cartridge was produced (and sold) about 100 times.

I am just guessing, but I suppose the Harmony is probably the best selling of those three.

[SpiceWare]

My current projects are utilizing the advanced features in order to hopefully spur sales of Harmony & Melody carts so that batari can recoup the money he spent developing it.

[DickNixonArisen]

For that and your other excellent efforts, I salute you, sir spicerack.

[SeaGtGruff]

SpiceWare, on Tue May 3, 2011 8:57 AM, said:

My current projects are utilizing the advanced features in order to hopefully spur sales of Harmony & Melody carts so that batari can recoup the money he spent developing it.

I don't have a Harmony cart yet-- although I had meant to buy one of the first ones (just had other $ stuff come up at the time)-- but I'm starting to experiment with DPC+ kernels in assembly. Not saying I'll ever have anything for *sale*, but I'd love to see all or most future 2600 programs take advantage of the Harmony's features!

By the way, what's the price up to? I know the price has gone up once or twice now. I need to buy one sooner or later. Right now I have no way to test my DPC+ stuff on a real 2600.

Michael

[SpiceWare]

There are some quirks with Stella's implementation where DPC+ and ARM code runs OK on Stella but not on the real thing. As such, I recommend getting one before you get too far along on a project, else it could be extremely difficult to track down what's not working correctly.

$60 for standard, $80 for deluxe.

[RevEng]

SpiceWare, on Wed May 4, 2011 1:46 PM, said:

$60 for standard, $80 for deluxe.

And it's an absolute steal at that price!

[batari]

DickNixonArisen, on Tue May 3, 2011 3:43 AM, said:

Someone else asked about the market potential for an atari product in another thread and I thought this question might be relevant to him. Now I'm curious too. Also, any idea of the number of Krok/Cuttle carts sold?

What thread?

Market potential is hard to estimate without knowing anything about the product.

[dwane413]

batari, on Wed May 4, 2011 3:36 PM, said:

DickNixonArisen, on Tue May 3, 2011 3:43 AM, said:

Someone else asked about the market potential for an atari product in another thread and I thought this question might be relevant to him. Now I'm curious too. Also, any idea of the number of Krok/Cuttle carts sold?

What thread?

It's item #10 on the list of questions in this thread: 2600 Questions

batari, on Wed May 4, 2011 3:36 PM, said:

Market potential is hard to estimate without knowing anything about the product.

[ScumSoft]

Speaking of improvements to the 2600, the DPC+ is rather advanced for it as is, however I would love to see dedicated frame-buffer functions for bank 6, and data fetchers that can access all banks not just bank 6 as well. (can be done internally inside the DPC? without bothering the 6507?)
This way you can do advanced tile mappings of the screen space and have the future DPC++ handle scrolling and masking of sprite data.
But most of these functions are really just catering it to myself though I can probably still make it do these things with some custom ARM code.

[stephena]

SpiceWare, on Wed May 4, 2011 1:46 PM, said:

There are some quirks with Stella's implementation where DPC+ and ARM code runs OK on Stella but not on the real thing. As such, I recommend getting one before you get too far along on a project, else it could be extremely difficult to track down what's not working correctly.

Patches are welcome to fix the deficiencies in Stella

[SpiceWare]

The HI / LOW discrepancy is probably easy to fix, just need to know what's happening in the Harmony's DPC+ routines and make Stella match.

The crashing of ARM code is another matter, though we did find a change in custom.S (used when compiling the ARM code) that may have fixed that issue. Need to do a lot of testing to confirm it one way or another.

Edited by SpiceWare, Wed May 4, 2011 5:57 PM.

[batari]

dwane413, on Wed May 4, 2011 4:01 PM, said:

batari, on Wed May 4, 2011 3:36 PM, said:

DickNixonArisen, on Tue May 3, 2011 3:43 AM, said:

Someone else asked about the market potential for an atari product in another thread and I thought this question might be relevant to him. Now I'm curious too. Also, any idea of the number of Krok/Cuttle carts sold?

What thread?

It's item #10 on the list of questions in this thread: 2600 Questions

batari, on Wed May 4, 2011 3:36 PM, said:

Market potential is hard to estimate without knowing anything about the product.

Thanks. Well, they said exactly nothing about the "product."

Atari 2600 stuff is already very much a niche market. I would say that depending on the product, you'd have a market potential between a few and a few hundred units - the former being an overpriced, poorly-programmed demo that only collectors would buy, and the latter being a reasonably-priced, must-have product.

I would say that in general, the market is not very viable if your idea is to hire someone to design a product (and indeed, there are many examples of epic failures here). However, if you possess the technical skills yourself, that's another story, and while you may generate a profit, when you account for your time, it may be less than minimum wage.

[stephena]

batari, on Wed May 4, 2011 7:53 PM, said:

Atari 2600 stuff is already very much a niche market. I would say that depending on the product, you'd have a market potential between a few and a few hundred units - the former being an overpriced, poorly-programmed demo that only collectors would buy, and the latter being a reasonably-priced, must-have product.

I would say that in general, the market is not very viable if your idea is to hire someone to design a product (and indeed, there are many examples of epic failures here). However, if you possess the technical skills yourself, that's another story, and while you may generate a profit, when you account for your time, it may be less than minimum wage.

I fully agree with this. IMO, one should never enter into this market specifically expecting to make a profit. At best, it will either be a break-even deal, or turn into a labour of love. Don't mean to discourage anyone, but it's best to be honest up front and let people know what they're getting into.

For my work on Stella over the past 10 years, all the contributions I've received probably add up to equivalent of 1/2 a weeks wages And I do appreciate every donation that's been made. But if you do something in this area, it has to be because you want to, not because you expect to make a fortune (or even minimum wage) doing it.

[raindog]

stephena, on Thu May 5, 2011 4:04 AM, said:

For my work on Stella over the past 10 years, all the contributions I've received probably add up to equivalent of 1/2 a weeks wages And I do appreciate every donation that's been made. But if you do something in this area, it has to be because you want to, not because you expect to make a fortune (or even minimum wage) doing it.

My own little Atari projects have provided me with the means to acquire probably 4 times the number of other people's homebrew cartridges than I'd have been able to with only my own disposable income. All my Atari income stayed in the Atariage ecosystem as store credit (and has long since dried up) but that's more than I'd ever have expected from such a niche hobby. I roll my eyes whenever people start talking about market analysis and potential profits... either you're compelled to write a 2600 game as a passion project or as an artistic or scholarly statement, or you're embarking on a quest which you've already failed. Hardware is a more complex issue, but 2600 accessories haven't been an industry in about 28 years and it's not going to just spontaneously come back to life now. It gets created when there's an itch to be scratched, and someone figures out how to scratch it without having to win the lottery, like the need for one-off portable 2600s with tiny paddles, or a RAM-loaded, flash-enabled 2600 cart with a coprocessor.

I have both a Cuttle and a Harmony. I've never actually tried the Harmony because I have no more TVs with antenna inputs and can't find either my old VCR or AV-modded 2600; my life has been chaos for over half a decade now. But I look forward to finally, after all these years, being able to have every variation of every homebrew ever made -- hell, almost every game ever made including Pitfall 2 -- on a single cart with a nice menu and 5 bucks worth of SD card in it. I'd guess that the Harmony's continued production alone means that there are more out there than there are of Cuttle Carts.

[Random Terrain]

The Harmony cart needs a slogan similar to this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9o2I5Z0cpY#t=0m28s


Crank out so many that there are more Harmony carts than there are Atari 2600s. Then when somebody starts making a new Atari 2600 clone, there will be enough for everybody. If the new 'clone' turns out to be the Stellacon that uses bin files itself, then people wouldn't need the Harmony cart for that, but who knows what will happen, so more Harmony carts better be made just in case.

[sermajic]

Bought over a half dozen to show support, waiting for h2 to order another batch...

[DickNixonArisen]

And that's why I feel right at home here among 40-something nostalgaoids even myself as a fringe DIY anarchopunk, somewhat settled by married life: people are creating the reality they want for themselves, with shared tools, motivated by passion.

[Random Terrain]

DickNixonArisen, on Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:19 PM, said:

. . . people are creating the reality they want for themselves . . .

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMkve9cHkjg

[DickNixonArisen]

If that's what works for you, go with it.

[chupathingy]

take the number of carts purchased, and add one. I will soon be the proud owner of a Harmony Cart!

Just in time, too. I just found my 2600's power supply and little RCA>Coax adapter!

Now all I need to get is a copy of Dan Iacovelli's Laserman and a genesis controller.

[player 0ne]

i wish i could get a hold of batari before i ordered one. i never place an order without contacting someone. cant email him. can message him on the board. whats up with that?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

player 0ne, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 8:22 AM, said:

i wish i could get a hold of batari before i ordered one. i never place an order without contacting someone. cant email him. can message him on the board. whats up with that?

What's wrong with that?

Write him a contact message on the board and let him decide if he wants to meet your requirements.

[player 0ne]

Thanks TJ.

[disjaukifa]

I've now bought 3 from batari, though I wish I hadn't sold my first one, it was one of the first ones sold at a classic gaming expo in the North East in 09, wish I hadn't had to sell that one, but I had too.


-Disjaukifa