Comments: Homebrew Video Games Cost Too Much! 

Yes there is little understanding out there of how much it costs to make physical products. Boxes, stickers, manuals, cases all have a price per qty and minimum viable purchase that add to the cost. Let alone assembly, testing and actually packing and shipping. But I also agree we need to make sure the games being released are worth purchasing. There are a lot of quick ports (that take advantage of system similarities) where the original code is being ripped off and the original author not being consulted, let alone paid for their work. Games written from scratch, based on a decent game, using the target system’s capabilities are a different matter (although copyright on graphic characters/mascots etc does need to be respected). Good topic.

If you're not into the thing, no cost will be reasonable to ya. It's that simple. Good deals do not rely on value or cost but more if both parties are happy with the exchange. How I see it anyway.

i guess i dont understand the motive here. Did this person think u would drop the price or something? If u think its too much or dont like it then just simply move on....... It just seems like a comment to spread more negativity online. I wouldnt even pay any mind to the comment imo. Good video brian, keep doing your thing.

With the amount of copies of these games that get sold, a $10 profit per copy would mean that publishers would literally be paying people to buy their games. Thousands of dollars are put into publishing a game. Ridiculous.

Good video! I can remember when the Atari 2600 system came out, and how much the new Atari games cost anywhere from $39.95 up to $49.95 US. Back then, that was a lot of money for the games, but they were new and people bought them! I don't mind paying a good price for a homebrew game for both the Atari 2600 and the Intellivison! There is a lot of work put into making and putting it all together.

If I were to order a CIB game from you, would you be willing to sign the box? I'm going to buy Napoleonic Wars from you regardless. That would be a nice extra for people who would like to have that... like me. :)

From a purely consumerist point of view the commenter may have a point. By a purely consumerist view, I mean looking at all the options available, looking ONLY at the quality of the product and the price, and purely making purchasing decisions based on those things. (Of course, "quality" is subjective.) But I'd say the homebrew scene is more than that. It's about supporting a community of small-time creators doing crazy things on obsolete machines. :) Homebrew game purchasers who like Intellivision find unique value in the unique qualities of Intellivision games, including the graphics, audio, and the controllers. To me, even the font of the text characters drawn by an Intellivision has a special charm to it that I enjoy. I like seeing a console I grew up with pushed to its limits, or just playing a cool, new game on it. For physical games such as Napoleonic Wars, a purchaser has to enjoy the coolness factor of having those physical things like the box and cart, etc, as opposed to just a ROM or mobile app. If you find value in these things, then you're willing to pay more. If you don't then you aren't. Some would say it's all nostalgia fueled. Maybe some of it is, but that's almost beside the point. Also, as already touched upon, profit margins for homebrewers aren't huge and no homebrewer is getting the benefits of mass production as a mega-corporation like Nintendo would. So you simply have to charge more to make a few bucks. It sounds like even if you wanted to break completely even, you'd have to charge at least $40 or $50.

People complaining about the price of physical homebrew games don't understand the costs to make them in such small quantities. I've seen people in the homebrew community explain this many times and I'm thinking most of the complainers don't believe it. But the complainers aren't the ones buying, so this opinion isn't really important. They would only buy if you were selling at a price where you lose money (and that's only talking about the ones who would buy) and still believe they are supporting you. Flash cartridges and emulators are the most cost effective way of playing homebrew games. Digital versions can be played this way and I haven't seen anything priced unfairly. Speaking of which, I just bought Keystone Kopps. I don't have an Intellivision but I'll play it in an emulator. I've been meaning to play your games for a while now 🙂

I never understood this argument when it comes to entertainment. If an individual feels it's to expensive, that individual shouldn't buy it. Its not food. You will not perish by not having it.

"Too much" is subjective, and often ignores the costs of materials, the TIME and EXPERIENCE needed. Everyone wants stuff for free. Screw that. If something is too much for that person, then they don't have to buy it.

Just for this, I just messaged you about buying every ROM you've made....

I am upset that I can't have my games my way and have to take it into my own hands legally. I will be purchasing Piopow for the NES by the late developer Jeremias Babini from Limited Run Games. I want Famicom and they are not offering the Digital Version so I can play on my Everdrive. Now I need to get a Sanni Cart Reader so I can play my way.

The people who always demand everything for free are those who NEVER produce anything of value themselves. You don't even have to indulge their worthless opinions. Charge what you want, and make as much money as you can. You deserve to reap the full rewards for all of your hard work, and all of the value you brought to the community.

Not too long ago my wife and I had a so so dinner that cost $60. I thought to myself, I could have bought a homebrew Atari game for the price. A game would give a lot longer satisfaction than the lackluster meal. Bottom line: the homebrew community has taken this hobby to a place it never would be without their contribution to the retro world. I think these prices are reasonable.

Yeah, it's a simple matter of economics. The homebrew classic gaming market is very niche'. This is to say it's not a large market by any means and that translates into higher prices. I personally would expect to pay considerably higher prices on custom homebrew games than even modern AAA games, simply because they are so rare. As you stated, homebrew developers are not making money off of their products - margins are incredibly tight. It's a difficult market to be in. You have every sympathy from me. I totally get it. I hope all of your hard work pays off one day! You're doing such a wonderful service for the community to keep it alive. Kudos to you!

Brian, I think you are doing this as a labour of love for the Intellivision, otherwise you would only do releases for the most common consoles, like the NES and 2600. But, as you say you engaged the services of professional artists and they cost money, so having some way of pricing the game to recoup those costs is important. If you were going to sell 100,000 copies of Napoleon, it would be priced differently, as economics of scale would affect things when doing so many. The RU-vidr comments from yesterday, seemed to touch on this, when we mentioned NES games, which I would imagine have a bigger audience than the Intellivision. When I see how much people pay to go to a concert now, even with 30,000 people, you might be paying $200 for a show that goes one hour. Video games are way better value, and I think you would have priced your game as low as practical without planning to make a loss, so people with a brain can understand that.

Don't know what Intellivision PCBs cost or what kind of EPROM would be used. Intellivision uses that weird 10 bit addressing or something, doesn't it? My roms are thrown out there for whoever wants to play with them. There might be a slight glitch in some but they are more than playable. When I had Atari Age make a couple custom cartridges for me for my 2600 games they look like something that would have come right out of the box way back but they were $25 a piece. For making custom NES carts of my work I found the cheapest route was to cannibalize old Ice Hockey and 10 Yard Fight carts for the NROM 256 circuit boards cheap. Like $3 to $5 each. The lock out chip is already on it so my games would run. Don't think that would go well trying to "sell" a custom game that way but for personal use... Meh. Plus you might be able to reuse a shell if it isn't beat up. I think 27c256 Eproms were fairly cheap so desolder the 2 chips off the board and solder in your own. For Super Nintendo things are a bit different. I know there are ways to reuse the boards on some but you need to rewire connections so it might start to look like a plate full of spaghetti for complicated stuff. Muramasa boards are fairly cheap. Like $2.50 I think off hand. Maybe $4 or so for more complicated stuff. But that's the thing... If you do a simple LoROM game that is only about 512K or less you just need cheap stuff like capacitors. The Eproms are a little more and there are tiny chips you can make reverse engineered multi region lock out chips out of. If you got a more complicated board then you have to buy SRAM, Batteries, some chip that deals with higher addresses, etc. Shells were not cheap. $5 a piece and all they had were blue and orange for colors. The larger Eprom sizes cost a few bucks per chip depending what you are getting. Also need an Eprom Programer. I have a GQ 4x4 and an ADP-054 adaptor for larger Eprom sizes. Probably about $150 I think it was? But it's versatile so I can program Eproms for NES, SNES, Genesis and I think there is a newer board type for making Colecovision games with a 27c256 Eprom I think. I tried desoldering a Donkey Kong ROM but it could only read half of it. Some weird method they used to program it. Labels cost me about $1 a piece for NES from a custom printing place but the feel isn't exact. I have no idea what a custom box would run. It all adds up but I suppose the more stuff you buy in bulk for parts the cheaper it gets.

I saw that comment from your previous video and I was going to chime in, but I hadn't gotten around to it. What's unfortunate about the Intellivision homebrew scene, in comparison to other retro consoles, is that it has a relatively small fanbase, plus hardware that's more proprietary. I feel bad that we have to charge $65 for a physical game, but that's very near at cost right now, compared to about half that for Atari homebrews. What's needed is to grow the indie community until somebody comes along who can get us materials or carts manufactured at a lower cost. But it took until 2014 and the onset of IntyBASIC just to get more developers onto the scene. Until then, everything had to be written in 100% Assembly Language. Just having the know-how to write indie games at all required the expertise of technical giants like Joe Zbiciak and Arnauld Chevallier. The part of the comment comparing Intellivision games to cheap mobile games is just unfair. Nobody gets into developing games for retro platforms with any expectation to become independently wealthy. Platforms like mobile phones have a much broader potential market, and so there's some hope that a developer can write the next Flappy Bird or Bejeweled. As it is, there's no way we can create an Intellivision game and just bundle it with an emulator and post it as a package on any app store, especially if it's a JLP game which requires jzIntv.

I totally understand, Brian. Its sad when you get pennies in the end after making something great to play on an old system. The guy commenting, appearantly, does not understand costs and all involvements it takes to bring a cib game. I'm thankful and appreciate all the programmers who do it for us fans. So brian, what's your next game coming?

I think the person who has sent you this comment, clearly does not "get" the homebrew scene. Firstly as to the cost, have they gone out and seen the cost of current gen titles??? They clearly are both entitled and lacking in any understanding of the cost against the scale of the market. It's a niche market, not a mass market. And it's simple - as with all things in life, if you can't afford it, don't buy it. As to the ports issue. Utter nonsense, for me I would always want to play a good port on an old system. Do I want to play Gorf or Food Fight on the Intellivision? Absolutely! For me part of the pleasure is seeing what can be done on the old hardware. Brian, I think you show yourself as a fair and patient person in your multiple response to this tools comments. They clearly don't "get it". Qudos to you for "trying" to address this person.

At least you're offering the roms. I see some homebrews for sale where all you can get is the fully boxed cartridge.

The only people that complain about the price of games, are the cheapskates, that would spit on their mother grave flowers to water them.

I used to pay $60 per game for SSI wargames back in the early to mid-80s. That's the equivalent of $181.37 today.

I'm sure your viewer was well intended in his comments, but you really should stop worrying about people who are clearly not your market. Your limited market is for those remaining Intellivision Owners who still want quality games. Some will just prefer roms and some want the full retail kit. And some will actually buy both.Your market will never be those who just want to emulate on their PC for cheap or free. As far as cost, yes, I, too, have to swallow hard sometimes as to whether it is worth it for me to pay full retail price for a new Intellivision game. I have and will, but money is limited for most. That said, my and other people's circumstances have nothing to do with the actual value of your game. In 1980 an Intellivision console cost a whopping $300.00 with carts selling around $25 to $35. Back then a Chevrolet Impala retailed for about $7000. Today the cheapest one lists goes for around $40,000. You can pay up to $75,000. Back in 1990 when the sales of Intellivisions, Sears and Tandy versions ended, the total number sold is believed to be around 5 million. In 2022 Xbox series x/s alone sold 8.1 million. We Intellivision owners are now but a mere fly speck in surviving numbers, when it comes to owners of modern consoles. INTV Programmers/Developers can't produce sufficient numbers to drive costs down and the fact that you are even willing to sell carts at $60 or $70 for quality games is frankly amazing when you compare the increase in prices I've displayed over the last 50 years. For what little money you make, this clearly is still a labor of love. Don't let people who may have no idea how to run a business; who may have no desire to do so, and have no idea how long it takes to program a game, try to guilt you or any other homebrewer for trying to make some money when you, too, are trying to make a living. There will always be people who are just takers. I personally may not be able to buy everything, but I can still applaud what you and others do for this small community. Thank you!👏

Everything costs too much!

I don't think that people understand that the circuit board for these new games are NOT recycled Mattel boards with a 2 dollar eprom stuck on them. Just the circuit board COSTS more than the used $8 Defender of the Crown copy that guy cites. Not to mention all of the 100 percent new materials in Intellivision Defender of the Crown, a legitimate licensed game. Surprise. A new game costs a lot more money than an old used game. I'm frankly sick of people trying to convince people who buy Intellivison homebrews that they are being ripped off. If you don't think they are something you want to support, nobody is twisting your arm to buy them! These games are obviously not for you. But, please stop trying to undermine the scene by trying to convince others they are being ripped off when you are obviously ignorant of the true cost of these games. Stop being a "D.B.'

Buy the ROM of DK Arcade to avoid paying $80 bucks

It’s priced fair Brian.

Where possible i go for digital OR i contribute to the project (i do video game music)