Amico Fun Conversations |OT| What the heck’s an Intellivision Amico? Console’s leaky dev portal offers hints
- Thread starter Dancrane212
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- Tech OT
Man, this saga is a wild one and they just continue to make the worst choices at every step in the process.
$8.7 million in debt and less than half a million in cash on hand, they will not be able to secure any line of credit to manufacture the actual devices with such dire financials, even the best case scenario would have them taking years to recoup any of that money after factoring in the production costs themselves. The risk with this company overwhelmingly outweighs the potential reward, anyone investing in this wants to be scammed or just doesn't have any idea what they are buying in to.
The product has extremely limited market potential at it's probable price point, they might even launch a product more expensive than the family favorite Nintendo Switch and the powerful Xbox Series S, how does that even happen with the technology seemingly driving the product. If it was a $99 thing, sure, but paying $250-$350 to play Cornhole seems pretty unrealistic as an impulse buy.
That new crowdfunding site also scream like it's a bad one, they are literally using FOMO strategies to make people invest early by giving away free shares, it's literally short of having a "best deal" badge, it screams desperation.
I'm curious if the Amico ends up being some crazy collectors item in the future as it seems likely the company will fold before it's ever really mass produced.
$8.7 million in debt and less than half a million in cash on hand, they will not be able to secure any line of credit to manufacture the actual devices with such dire financials, even the best case scenario would have them taking years to recoup any of that money after factoring in the production costs themselves. The risk with this company overwhelmingly outweighs the potential reward, anyone investing in this wants to be scammed or just doesn't have any idea what they are buying in to.
The product has extremely limited market potential at it's probable price point, they might even launch a product more expensive than the family favorite Nintendo Switch and the powerful Xbox Series S, how does that even happen with the technology seemingly driving the product. If it was a $99 thing, sure, but paying $250-$350 to play Cornhole seems pretty unrealistic as an impulse buy.
That new crowdfunding site also scream like it's a bad one, they are literally using FOMO strategies to make people invest early by giving away free shares, it's literally short of having a "best deal" badge, it screams desperation.
I'm curious if the Amico ends up being some crazy collectors item in the future as it seems likely the company will fold before it's ever really mass produced.
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I imagine DJC, Snestastic et al reading all that, saying to themselves, "Absolutely no worries there, can't wait to play Shark Shark"
Did Tommy ever reveal how people were going to "take their games to their friend's house to play on their friend's Amico?" Especially if everything is a fucking NFT?
is that from their invite only facebook group?Lol this guy is shilling hard
That "patience, child, patience" shit is just infuriatingly condescending. Like, even though it's coming from the living embodiment of that "smirking mask over a crying face" meme and is probably directed at someone the same age or older, it just activates a primal reaction that makes me want to throw old sandwiches at their face.Lol this guy is shilling hard
Good God.
I mean, it's like "Oh my God!" surprising and not at all surprising in the least at the same time, somehow, lol.
Seeing this on the reddit post linked...
Like... they appear to be desperate for money and they still need to spend that much forr "firmware and OS?"
I mean, I admit I don't know anything when it comes to developing or launching a console, but it feels like they should have the OS closer to being done by now?
Who the hell would give them money based on this? I guess they're hoping the crowdfunding will blow up with people who don't care to look closely into the company's financials, but I'd have to imagine for any "big loans" (that might actually help them), the lender would be looking closer into the company.
Maybe he can hit up his cousin Steven Tyler for a loan, lol.
Yep!
Yeah it's quite annoying reading that kind of stuff, lol. He posts things like that regularly.
Like seriously what an awful deal for the company. That is such a huge chunk of money
This whole saga was been wonderful to follow. Thanks to everyone who keeps updating this thread.
Have an Amico day whatever that means.
Have an Amico day whatever that means.
The games they show in the background of their crowd campaign look like Flash games I'd play in high school on the library computers. They can't be serious with this thing.
...I just started reading this thread today.
It is absolutely amazing. 🤎
Thank you to everybody who keep posting with further updates, you're doing us all a great service!
It is absolutely amazing. 🤎
Thank you to everybody who keep posting with further updates, you're doing us all a great service!
I feel like you could probably find a loanshark to give you more reasonable terms than that.
I suspect the Completely Unnecessary Podcast will do an unedited pundit show about it tomorrow.
I miss SD&R too. This is pretty relevant to Tommy though:
Only those clips of Tommy admitting that it wasn't real and they just said it because it sounded cool.
An interesting look at the financials from one user on Reddit:
Very interesting. As of last financial year-end they were $8.7m in debt with a $3.2m loss for the year and $428k cash on hand.
They made $40k revenue in that year, and $136k the year before, so pre-orders and physical game sales have been, uh, not great.
The fundraising docs have a few more nuggets of info too:
Very interesting. As of last financial year-end they were $8.7m in debt with a $3.2m loss for the year and $428k cash on hand.
They made $40k revenue in that year, and $136k the year before, so pre-orders and physical game sales have been, uh, not great.
The fundraising docs have a few more nuggets of info too:
- RRP will be $250 to $350
- Launch to start within 6 months.
- Manufacturing 2,000 to 5,000 units per month.
- Confirms all games will be NFTs.
- Only 15 games at launch, including the 6 pack-ins.
- Tommy is only on $96k (he got a raise in 2021), the rest is stock options.
- John Alvarado got a paycut ($18k less) in 2021.
- Many of the people used in their advertising are not employed by the company ($0) and only "work" 15 minutes per week.
- Their Chief Marketing Officer is on $152k - what does this person do all day?
- They paid $1.35m to Ark for manufacturing but they had a contract dispute and may not get it back.
- Their auditor issued a "going concern" opinion with "substantial" doubts that they will succeed as a business and will be unable to continue beyond this year without additional financing.
- They have $3.1m in loans from board members, and are paying 10% annual interest on a quarter of those (and $1.1m interest is accrued and unpaid), plus $1.6m in promissory notes at 5% interest.
- They admit they need a LOT more money, at least another $5m on top of the $5m they want from this - they will be doing another fundraise even if this one is successful (Reg D next time).
- While Tommy is the largest shareholder, he does NOT own a majority - only 28.8%.
- Tommy lied when he said there was tens of millions of dollars from big outside investors. The bulk of the money has been director loans and the crowdfunding, besides that there was $3.2m in convertible notes in 2021 (possibly the Republic funds?) and $3m in equity (the bulk of which was in mid 2019).
- "Based on current fundraising strategies, it is estimated that the company can operate until July 2022 without generating any revenue."
- Only planning to make 1 game every 2 weeks going forward.
- They have prepaid some components and the board will offer a line of credit (terms undisclosed), and hoping to get some lines of credit from manufacturing contracts currently being negotiated.
- Trying to raise $10m from venture capital firms (guessing this is what Delaware was about - sounds like a buyout), which is the amount they need to successfully launch.
- "If no other sources of capital are raised and if only the minimum [$10k] is raised as part of the CF offering the company would only have operating cash for one to two months."
- If they raise $5m from this crowdfund, it would only "fund the company for approximately 7 to 9 months".
- LOL Sudesh loaned them $675k on horrible terms - they need to pay him $100 PER AMICO SOLD (all the preorders!) until paid back, PLUS a $202k fee.
- Heh their $30m company valuation is based on a 15x ROI.
- Up to Oct 2021 $9.5m was spent on R&D (h/w + s/w) Edit: $6.2 was game dev.
- If they raise $5m+ they plan to spend 32% of it on R&D for the firmware and OS! Only 18% on Marketing - so much for Tommy's $10m marketing plan.
- If I'm reading it correctly, they have 5,400 preorders ($540k in deferred revenue of $100 per preorder).
I'll take the job of their chief marketing officer for $50k less than they're paying their current one. I won't give up my current job, but I can promise to not do a worse job than their current marketing strategy
You better ask to be paid in cash, cause that check might not be clear
Sheesh, an $100 price hike? That pricing already makes it more expensive than the Swtich and puts it in current gen territory with the Series S. They're really sending this thing to die, if they can release it at all.
The funny thing is flipping through that a bunch of them had some Intellivision stock in their compensation, which isn't unusual for a startup. But I think I'd rather take my extra compensation in Dave and Busters tickets.
I remember thinking before that this company was top heavy, but for not having any income they seemed to have a lot of money flowing into the pockets of people who don't seem to do much of anything.
2021 monetary compensation
Tallarico (CEO) - $96k
Nick Richards (CFO/COO)- $96k
Phil Adam (CRO) - $105k
John Alvarado (CTO) - $156k
Rob Johnson (CMO) - $152k
That's $605k in payroll that went out to a group of people who didn't really do much of anything to move this thing forward. 105k to a Chief Revenue Officer when there was no revenue, $152k to a Chief Marketing Officer when all of the marketing was done by Tommy talking to low rent YouTubers and taking the hardware to family fun parks 4 times to expose the product to tens of people. The "marketing" that they're paying a guy six figures to head up has led to 5000-6000 preorders. That might have been better spent on someone who could source reasonable components for the Amico...
I'm kinda feeling ... Pity for them? It's been an insane ride that looks like it's ending in 2022.
Truly amazing.
You'd just have to be positive and look at how much he has changed after those years?
What else to comment!?
Same. Regardless of how idiotic they've been, it's sad to see a company going under.
This is a ponzi scheme, isn't it...
3 seconds in, and I'm just thinking of Fyre Fest
That Francois guy is radio silent through all this unless I missed something. You'd think the meta trolling would be going into the endgame now.
That is a lot of money to hang around making amico videos in a bathroom.
This is the part that is most unreal to me. Yes, it's probably all a scam, but with the resources they had how has the extent of their outreach been <100 middle aged weirdos? All their official videos have such incredibly low view counts, how could they not have drummed up any real interest, or at least worked out how to pay for bot views, just to give the whole grift even the slightest air of legitimacy? It's like they are actively being incompetent.
Get a few infleuncers and streamers. They couldn't afford a Cohcarnage but they could probably find some people with decent following.
I think they've been running pretty lean, apart from that executive pay and the inexplicable office leases during a 2 year long pandemic. Most of their games aren't done and these are small games that don't take years to make. This thing has been the Tommy show and it's clear he sucks at picking games. Like their initial videos had a bunch of games and the only things that people really seemed to pay attention to were Cloudy Mountain and Nightstalker for their sort of low rent Housemarque vibe. Those games are MIA and instead they seem to have focused all their limited resources on Shark Shark, Astrosmash, Missile Command, that tank game and porting a middling platformer and making it worse.
As far as marketing, PAX West didn't have a whole lot going on this year, had gaming press there anyway, and on that weekend he took the Amico to a mini golf place in Irvine.
I have no faith in that, something tells me he'll move on to another grift.
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