Commodore Gears Up To Re-Enter Game Industry
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Cool... hopefully. :)
September 27, 2005
Commodore Gears Up To Re-Enter Game Industry
Yeahronimo Media Ventures, owner of the Commodore license, has announced its intention to return the brand to gaming. Yeahronimo will work with the Content Factory to form a new company, called Commodore Gaming, that produces software and hardware to exploit its back catalog of retro games.
Yeahronimo acquired the Commodore license early in the year, and is only now announcing its plans for the brand. Content Factory will contribute 18 million Euros ($21.62 million USD) to the venture, 6 million of which is payment for a 49% interest in the company and 12 million in cash to be paid out over the course of five years.
The new company will produce standalone TV devices similar to the wildly successful Atari and Pac-Man self-contained units, as well as software packages akin to Intellivision Lives or Atari Anthology. Furthermore, the Commodore Games label will produce original game licenses as a more traditional games publisher.
"The business will be developed in three phases," said Yeahronimo CEO and President Ben van Wijhe. "Initially, the focus will be on exploiting the numerous existing C64 retro game licenses through plug-and-play, mobile and handheld devices. The second phase will be to create a range of specialised gaming hardware products and accessories."
"The third phase will be to work with Commodore's existing partners to issue new game licenses under the Commodore brand name, focusing primarily on the mobile and handheld market in addition to the PC and console market, which have its stronger licenses."
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=6655 I wonder if this will affect the availability of game downloads for emulators i.e. will the get legal on people's asses.
Maybe, it will probably never get off the ground though. The Commodore name is jinxed!
As long as I dont have to listen to David Pleasance playing guitar again I really dont care.
>Maybe, it will probably never get off the ground though.
>The Commodore name is jinxed!
My thought exactly... Although the reason for that could be that the commodore brand has been acquired repeatedly by companies which were not doing well financially.
Andy
Commodore has great nostalgia value to it's fans, but nobody gives a hoot about the current owners. We know it's not Commodore, we know the product is nothing to do with the Amiga.
As the end of the day all the modern owners are failing because they're using Commodore purely for branding. Unless they actually recapture the essense of pioneering and doing it your own way then no Commodore fan is going to think of it as anything other than slandering their fond memories of their youth.
Look at this latest venture, mobile phone games? Just what was Commodore's version of Sonic / Mario anyway? Zool? ... Give me a break.
The Commodore brand stood for innovation, doing it your own way, and being able to sneer at the mainstream. A cheap branding exercise to flog something entirely different is going to fall on deaf ears.
I concur.
:P
One of the big things for me was directly programming the hardware. Its just not the same these days, and i doubt they'll make it any different.
>A cheap branding exercise to flog something entirely
>different is going to fall on deaf ears.
Absolutely... The slick marketing sharks looked at what the C= logo was on sale for and then looked at how many times the name showed up on google.
Andy
I conquer! :P
If I wear a dearstalker, that doesn't make me Sherlock Holmes! :)
They dont appear to have thought that through, commodore didnt own any part of 99.99% of c64 games and licenses wernt required to write c64 games.
If they released the c65 at a sensible price i'd buy one.
They dont appear to have thought that through, commodore didnt own any part of 99.99% of c64 games and licenses wernt required to write c64 games.
That thought did cross my mind, too. Me = confused.
>They dont appear to have thought that through, commodore
>didnt own any part of 99.99% of c64 games and licenses
>wernt required to write c64 games.
They propably think 'Commodore Soccer' will sell really well for cellphones...
Andy
Commodore has passed on! They are no more! They have ceased to be! They've expired and gone to meet their maker! They're stiff! Bereft of life, they rest in peace! Their innovative processes are now history! They're off the game! They've kicked the bucket, they've shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible!
Yes, but they haven't bought the farm, yet. :P
I suppose I'd better change it for you then.
I'll 'ave a look 'round the back...mmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnn..No.
I'm afraid we're right out of computer manufacturers sir.
I see. I see, I get the picture.
I've got a slug.
Failure waiting to happen.
I'm still waiting for my [a http://web.archive.org/web/20001014124950/http://www.commodore2000.com/]Commodore 2000[/a] :cp
Well, this story popped up 5-10 years ago - in a different format. This post has reminded me of something I read years ago.
Somebody had the idea that you could reinvent the 8/16 bit computer revolution in modern day china (5-10 years ago) - because they were behind the western world in home computing. They reckoned they could shift millions of units. I'm sure that the name Commodore was the focus of that story.
I don't think they ever did it though.
Commodore isn't a jinxed brand - Amiga is.
I'm glad I wasnt born 50 million years ago when you old fogies programmed Blitz on the Amiga ;)
I'm glad I wasnt born 50 million years ago when you old fogies programmed Blitz on the Amiga ;)
I was into AMOS Professional back then, never tried the Amiga Blitz.
shame as AMOS was much more limited, you could spot AMOS games a mile off.
>>I was into AMOS Professional back then, never tried the Amiga Blitz.
Same here except I did *try* Blitz, I couldnt make head nor tail of it. Call me dumb, but I liked AMOS' stupidity factor. It helped me make games.
I think the worse thing to happen to Blitz back then was their coverdisk version giveaway, as that's the version I tried - coding without a manual was a new concept back then, and it sucked as much then as it does now.
>>you could spot AMOS games a mile off.
With AmosPro you didn't have to have the brief orange screen...
I've no doubt looking back that Blitz was probably better on par, but AMOS was an excellent tool in it's own right and I got a lot out of it. I dont regret using it at all.
Commodore is dead -- sticking the brand name on something else won't change that.
I got
this book recently, The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. It's pretty decent so far. It even has a photo of 'Joe Pillow', for those familiar with Amiga lore of olde!
Yeah, I suppose that AMOS was good in the sense that it got lots of people programming, and that's a good thing. Blitz was better. When I first got my Amiga I had been programming on 48k Spec, C64 and BBC in basic and assembly (even wrote my own compiler for C64 in assembly) and I tried Amiga basic on workbench and HATED it. So gaddam slow and crappy and impossible to make anything decent. Then I stopped programming for a year and just played games. Then finally someone gave me Devpac 2 and I learn 68000 which was just incredible, the power! Tried AMOS and STOS (on friends Atari), but didn't groove. Then after a while I was jaded at how long it took to do anything in assembly and got Blitz. It was easily the best language I'd EVER used then because it was powerful basic that was compiled AND you could use inline assembly, dream come true really, sigh, those WERE the days.
Nope. Commodore had to be restructured several times before the Amiga even came into existence, and had to be bailed out several times in the eighties as well. Commodore was so poorly run that without the C64 and the Amiga, they would have gone bust ten years earlier.
As for AMOS, I have just one word for you. AMOS 3D! With AMOS 3D you could build 3D games and apps back in 1993.
Andy
those days were great... back then... and, to be honest... few of us realized how great it was at the time...
but... and i've seen this happen so many times... trying to recapture those good ole days just aint gonna work...
you can't go back...
it would just be really nice though if i was totally wrong on this...
--Mike
@James: The book sounds very interesting, thanks for the link ;)
Red: would be nice if you were wrong, maybe in the future you will be. Alternatively you can do enough drugs to fool yourself into thinking you are there.
If my memory serves me correctly Commodore just made the machines. I can't think of a game that Commodore made, and if they did they were probably poo.
edited out... i may have read the post wrong...
in which case i owe GA and anyone else who read it here an apology...
thx HJ...
--Mike
>If my memory serves me correctly Commodore just made the
>machines. I can't think of a game that Commodore made, and
>if they did they were probably poo.
Actually the Commodore sports games were very succesful and great fun to play(particularly the soccer game).
http://www.gb64.com/oldsite/gotw_intsoccer.htmAndy
He he Mike - go back and read Grey's post again. I don't think he was having a go at you at all! He was just saying the odds are so great as you yourself stated that you'd have to do a lot of drugs to feel like it could be real !
sorry HJ... i'll take a look at it again in a few...
i'm really quite busy and in the middle of something really improtant... and it aint workin' the way it's supposed to...
if i'm wrong... i'll apologize to im...
--Mike
Red: yeah man I wasn't being rude, just funny (or not as it seems). I never saw your "flamewar" post so luckily I'm cool.
whilt we are on the topic of commodore can I point you at my Gamebase64 Collector app which downloads all 17,000 C64 games from the web in 5 hours at 1mbit.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=51525enjoy
my fault entirely... my mistake... i aplogize... have mercy on me... trying to do toooo many things at one time... information overload...
server acting up here... added to my overreacting...
the post was only up for a minute or two... HJ helped get my feet back on earth...
again... i apologize...
--Mike
No I think Grey is the one who was totally out of order for suggesting anybody do Drugs...he should have his head locked in stocks so angry passing citizens can smack his bare botty or perhaps carve their names with a broken beer bottle.
A few winter months of that and he'll wake up to his responsibilities and no mistake....I know I did.
lol at Hujiklo. r u serious? Do you drink dude? I hope not. OK how about, have a mental breakdown (without drugs) and regress to a childhood state where you think you are playing on the C64 all the time, there. that's "Clean".
Commodore never designed the Amiga, they just bought it. Up to ROM 1.2 there was a message by the designers of the Amiga.
shame as AMOS was much more limited, you could spot AMOS games a mile off.
To an extend, yes... The original one had a weird flash of color at the beginning, the professional version didn't do that anymore...
Plus if you read the license of AMOS, you would find that they actually *required* you to put the 'amos' graphical logo on your game, which is kind of stupid.
I loved their usage of memory banks though, made it very easy to load & use sprites, music, etc.
>Plus if you read the license of AMOS, you would find that
>they actually *required* you to put the 'amos' graphical
>logo on your game, which is kind of stupid.
And was removed with the 1.3 upgrade because of customer pressure.
Andy
I actually did business with Yeahronimo, they're not very friendly people.
I remember when Tulip tried this a few years ago, it all went quiet after a bit of fuss.
Although after reading this article it appears it didn't die a death...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/29/tulip_sells_commodore/ Both Tulip and the new owner made very clear that the goal was to 'exploit' the 'commodore franchise'. In other words, it's just a name and a logo, and they couldn't care less about it.
Andy