Re: [stella] Making carts

Subject: Re: [stella] Making carts
From: fedeedw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Edward Federmeyer)
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 18:43:11 -0600 (CST)
On Tue, 4 Mar 1997 crackers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Maybe Bob or someone else who's released a game on cart, can share with us
> the process and cost they encoured.

Hi,  I've just joined the list, so I'm kind of catching this conversation
in the middle.  But heres my $.02 worth anyway:

When I was getting ready to release "SoundX" (with an eye towards "Edtris
2600" shortly after), I looked into having new PC boards made that could take
a standard 27xx EPROM and and 74xx NOT gate, using new plastic cases,
nice manuals, nice glossy labels, etc.  I forget what the cost would have
been, but it was very prohibitive.  I'd have to sell the carts for WELL over
$30 to make it worth while.  PLUS, I had no idea if I would sell 2-3 carts
or hundreds, or even thousands.  PLUS I would have to do all the soldering,
packaging, mailing, etc myself.

I also polled the "usenet" readers to get an idea how much people were
willing to pay.  I got responses from $5 to $100.  BUT, the average 
was less than $20.

A good solution I found was to have Randy Crihfield build the carts by
taking old pacman's and combats, ripping out the ROM, putting in an
EPROM with a 74xx NOT gate, and putting it back in the pacman/combat
case with a new (plain) label.  We chose $16 as the selling price.
That gave us enough money to split to make it worthwhile, and it's
also an attractive price to the buyers.  (Lower than most people were
expecting, judging by the poll).  Randy takes care of all the manufactuing,
parts procurement, manuals, labels, shipping, payments, etc.  I can keep
spending my time doing what I like doing (programming!).  Randy told
me he would be willing to strike up a similar deal with other developers.
You can contact him at: randyc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The only down side to producing carts this way is that it's only practical
for games of 4K or less.  BUT, from other threads I read in this list, it
will be a while before games get that complicated.  Perhaps by then, we can
get together on a design for a "generic" 8K/16K/whatever board, and make
enough for everyone, so that the per-board costs are lower.  (ie, if I
have a run of 200 made, and you do, we'll each pay $1000 each ($2000 total).
If we get together and have a run of 400 made it will cost us only a
total of $1500, or $750 each!-  I just made up these numbers, but you get
the idea I hope.)  This will become feasable only after q good number of
us are making games >4K.

Personally, I favor producing actual carts.  There is nothing like being
able to hold a cart in your hand and say "see this, I made it!".  Doing
that with a floppy disk of .BIN files just isn't the same, and that is
one of the things that attracted me to programming consoles in general.
Otherwise, I might just as well program a PC.  (err, actually thats what
I have been doing lately but you get the idea I hope!)

Plus, there are a lot more people with Atari's and NO Supercharger than
there are with Atari's AND Superchargers.  This will always be the case,
so it makes sense to make your target market as large as possible.  Only
if you specifically need Supercharger features does it make sense to limit
your target market.

Which brings me to another point.  Although we are all in this for "fun"
as a hobby, it is darn hard work.  We all should be proud that we are able
to hack on a system as tough as the Atari 2600!  There really are not
*that* many people who can do what we can.  As long as its so demanding,
we might as well make it worth the trouble.  I don't favor a "freeware" 2600
strategy.  I might as well do freeware for the PC, which is much easier.
That is not to say that I favor charging *alot* for carts, since most of
us grumble about $4 carts in thrift stores :-)  $16 was a price that
was accepted favorably by the 2600 collector community.  Maybe I could
have charged more, but then I don't know if I would have bought one of
my own carts myself :-)

Anyway, what all this boils down to is that I feel that releasing .BIN files
of demos and such is fine, but I would rather see actual carts remain as the
main 2600 disrtibution method.

Ed Federmeyer
fedeedw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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