[Coco] CoCo4! 50% done!

[Mark Marlette]

Bill / Nick,

It is really that simple and not....

Lets keep it simple....Little to no profit margin, 100 board run, $200 target price which IMHO, is a GREAT deal. I personally do not think that price is obtainable. The reason I say that is because basically you are making a custom DE-1, some removes, some add ons. Just call it equal....That is what Terasic is selling their device for and they are in the market, with contacts and volume. Look at at least twice that for a good not going broke starting point.

Whoever takes this on, will basically have to have $20K in funds for this project. As I can't speak for everyone, $20K to go play with little to no return on the investment and take on all the risk is a lot to ask. Throw those numbers in to the Shark Tank and see what they say. :) Yes I know they want to get rich, this is for the love of the machine. Just remember that at the end of the day....you have to eat too......

If the NRE is not distributed across the sales of X number of system. Who pays it? The developer? Normally so but with little to no profit margin, hard to do. Guessing the NRE would be at least 10+% of the price in a 100 board run. Additional sales would of course not have the NRE.


Gary's Kickstarter project was very noble, not sure how he could have survived it if it would have taken off. I love his passion!


Low volume production of BGA devices is VERY expensive. You won't build these at home. At least I wouldn't, Xray required for quality product.


My $0.02.....

Regards,

Mark
http://www.cloud9tech.com


________________________________
 From: Bill Loguidice <bill at armchairarcade.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2014 1:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo4! 50% done!
 

Is it really that simple, though? I don't know. I mean, I think "we" as the
community could be able to come to something of a consensus of what we'd be
willing to pay and what basic features would need to be met, but then would
that be enough. What numbers are we talking about here? Would 100 of us
willing to pay $200 for a faster/better/compatible CoCo 3 FPGA clone be
enough to get it done the right way? More? Less? I think we'd need to know
what realistic targets are. Maybe we'll find that the numbers just won't
work, if say, it would take 300 people at $200.

===================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade,
Inc.<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
Authored Books<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1>and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
===================================================



On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Nick Marentes <nickma at optusnet.com.au>wrote:

> Mark Marlette <mmarlette at ...> writes:
>
> > So what is reasonable? $100, $200, $400??? What is reasonable to one is
> unreasonable to another.
> >
> > The amount NRE involved in the development of these platforms is
> staggering.... If Altera is charging what
> > they are for their DE-1 or SOCs can you imagine what the pricing would be
> for each on a 100 unit run?
>
>
> What we're looking at is a price that most people would be prepared to pay
> in order to get enough units out there to encourage software development of
> new products.
>
> That is not a price based on what the cost to develop and produce but what
> the market percieves it to be worth to them.
>
> The reality is that even $400 is really a reasonable price. I remember
> paying around $400 for my CoCo3 back in the 80's and that didn't include a
> disk drive, so the FPGA CoCo is good value considering it has SD card
> storage, more colors and runs much faster.
>
> But are people prepared to pay that for a retro hobby computer when you can
> buy a laptop with built in LCD and hard drive for less nowadays?
>
> I think the magic price point is somewhere in the vicinity of $200.
> Anything
> more than that and people will question what they really want it for when
> there is no software that particularly uses the new features.
>
> Nick
>
>

--
Coco mailing list
Coco at maltedmedia.com
http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco