Revisiting The Intellivision Amico 1 Year Later - Is It Too Late?

In this episode, we sit down once again with fellow YouTuber life with Matthew to look back one year ago to our interview with Tommy Tallarico, and fallout from the Intellivision Amico since we last sat down.

Please show our co-host, Matthew, some love by checking out his channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA3eZ4K6hHdbd1jPhjuJZmw

February of 2021, we were thankful to have an opportunity to discuss the upcoming Intellivision Amico with Intellivision President and CEO Tommy Tallarico. We had a number of questions that we had not seen anyone ask anywhere else, questions about the company, the hardware, the games, and some fundamental gameplay questions. At the time, we were told that Amico would ship before the end of 2021. It is 2022 now, Amico still has not shipped, Tommy Is now head of creative and no longer the President, and the Amico is edging closer and closer to vaporware.

In just the first quarter of 2022, there have been some alarming news raised regarding both the company and the system. In their recent fourth round of fundraising, Intellivision is doing something that Tommy said they would never do, crowdfund. While one could argue in the past they did do a form of crowdfunding by inviting investors to purchase shares of the company, their latest effort is a straight-up crowdsource campaign. There are also reports from SEC filings that the company has been hemorrhaging money and, if new capital is not invested, the company could shut its doors as soon as 6 months from now.

In late 2020, Intellivision put out a sizzle reel with comments and feedback from YouTubers and content creators. In recent weeks, it has been discovered that a number of those clips were either manipulated or edited to change the context of the original clips, and content creators were not contacted to have permission requested to use their footage and likeness. Perhaps the two biggest personalities to point out how their comments were taken out of context were Shane Luis (Rerez - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnYtvzFpnzo&t=322s ) & Tipster (https://youtu.be/v34H9C9nbCw?t=214). When you watch the full clips where they are quoted in the Intellivision Video, they are both wishing the company the best, but neither of them thought that the Amico would be a success.

Being a physical game collector, one of the things that interested me was the assertion that Amico would use physical media, that you could go into a store, buy a physical game, and play it on the system. Tommy assured Matthew and I that Amico would have physical media releases because he did not like the idea of just going into a store and buying a download code. The "physical" games started to ship in 2021, even though there was no system to play them on. The physical games were nothing more than a card that looked like a cartridge in a, admittedly beautiful, box, with an Intellivision coin inside. In the end, this is a digital download code with a nicer presentation.

I have always been bothered by the fact that the Amico has had something held back, be it looks at the UI, the controllers, how you load games or the marketplace. In our original interview, Tommy mentioned that he needed to hold these things back because they had press commitments with organizations such as Rolling Stone, interesting that it was a music and not a gaming magazine, so he couldn't let it all out ahead of time. I have never seen any other system, once announced and intended to be a mainstream product featured in physical brick and mortar stores where you don't have a look at the hardware, the controllers, the software in some form or fashion once the system is announced. Tommy mentioned that he didn't want to show off an unfinished product, I get that, but at the same time perhaps the system was announced too early?

In the end, I never ordered or backed the Amico. I thought it was an interesting piece of technology and an interesting philosophy. It was not something for me, but I definitely saw its potential with a demographic of the gaming world. I did not know Matthew actually did pre-order one and has since canceled his pre-order. I understand where he got excited, and I feel bad for him that he has been let down. He is more cynical than I am where he doesn't believe that we may see hardware released at any point in time. I believe we may still see the Founders Edition ship, as we have seen pictures and videos of at least components to build systems. I hope those of you who have pre-ordered a system wind up getting it, and those that invested in the company don't end up losing your investment. Investment. But at this time, there is a lot that Intellivision needs to prove and deliver, and I don't know that they're capable of that any longer.

#Intellivision #Amico #Vaporware