Neodev wrote:Hello everyone,
This is Alex,
i just came today from a 600kms car drive after recording yesterday 13 hours of footage for a video where we are going to announce two new products. Once i arrived, i started to work on SSDS3 shipments, so we can save 1 day of waiting to our customers.
My partner told me about this post and once i finished my sunday TO work, i decided to have a look at it.
I have to say that a part of me feels ashamed and the other one feels sick after reading what some of you say/think about us.
I know you guys are not going to care, listen or believe what i have to say, but i am going to do it anyways.
First : We are retro gaming fans before anything else. We did Super SD System 3 cause it was a cool project (tech side) and cause we really wanted it. We had 0 hopes about this product selling half of what neosd sold or even it would sell anything at all.
Super SD System 3 was an act of love to the system since day one.
This vision we had about pcengine market, was the same that caused the RGB issue.
Here in Spain, PCE was never "anything" at all, i myself knew about PCE less than 10 years ago. Turbografx was a complete disaster here and before SSDS3 i didn't knew anyone here (in Spain) that had one or wanted one, among my friends circle. So we thought this project was going to be a commercial disaster, but we did it anyways cause we loved the system and loved the solution we had on mind.
Second : here in Spain, at least among my friends circle and the rest of the team´s circle, upscalers are not common, just because one reason : you can get a RGB capable TV for 20 euros everywhere, and in most cases you can get on for free cause people want to get rid of those. With a usual salary of 1.000 euros per month, who would buy an upscaler here.
90% of the tvs sold here came with RGB
So we never took (the needed) attention to RGB output on SSDS3. To us, RGB output on SSDS3 was just another line on the features list of a device that was designed from day one as an ODE that would play 99,9% of the games. To us, playing all games was the key feature of Super SD System 3.
After the failure of the first board, we decided to replace the boards and move on.
We tried to deliver a fast solution to avoid the amount of ppl doing trash talk and putting pressure on us. Fact is that you need 2 months to just produce another batch of anything, one month to produce pcbs and another one to get a SMT slot, cause SMT factory only gives you a slot once all parts are there (else they would be waiting for everyone with promises and nothing would be produced at all).
This is totally incompatible with what people demands today : 0 second solutions. If you don't deliver a 0 second solution, people just keep pushing harder and harder and harder again.
I just hope you will never have to live under this amount of extress.
People are also used about "the Amazon way", where you can ask for free replacements without paying shipping costs, or production costs at all. This is so cool what amazon has done, to kill small companies that just can't afford this (and i am not talking about ours, i am talking about the small shop that used to be on your street and just wasn't able to offer this, so it had to close).
Back at SSDS3
We did 2 big mistakes :
First one was to not think RGB had the importance that it has for "some of you", and i say "some of you", cause i still think you all are a small but noisy group of people (yes, you can blame me again for say what i think instead of what's politically correct)
Second one was try to please everyone, break our asses working 16 hours a day to have a new design as soon as possible, to just fix the issue and move on.
We should have :
Taken care about RGB since the beginning
Once the RGB issue was found, stop, think, work with calm, redesign the entire board, submit prototypes, try the board again, submit another prototype and have the issue fixed in 4 months.
But, would you guys would be able to wait 4 months without being fucking around everyday and putting more pressure day after day on us? i bet the answer is NO, cause you guys want the Amazon experience, 0 second solutions and everything free. It doesn't matters if this would kill TO, cause believe me : it would have killed the company for sure if we would have taken this route
Ofcourse, there was another thing we could have done to not be in this situation : show our product in advance to some RGB/audio expert and collaborate with him before the product was even announced.
Now that shit happened, it's pretty easy to say what would be better.
To me the right choice would have been contact an RGB/audio expert since day one, and this is what i would have done if i could get me a ticket on the Delorean with what i know now (RGB and audio is much more important than having 100% compatibility, to name one)
OK, so what happens with me/us saying we would never do another board revision and we ended doing it ?
First, i would like that : you guys saying me/us are shit, unfair with our customers, only looking for money and similar things : please clean your mouth before talking about us.
We have never been here looking for the money, we created this company to deliver things others were not able or didn´t cared to deliver. Things we wanted for ourselves. In the meanwhile we also wanted TO to be a successful company, so we could put earnings back into bigger things.
We said we would never would do another board revision cause we didn't had resources to do it at all. We hired a new layout engineer after SSDS3 board was done, but about that time, we had 4 more projects from us on queue. Much more advanced projects than SSDS3, (the first public where he did the layout is NEOSD PRO, 6 layers pcb)
So switching him to another project was not an option at all and with the amount of pending projects he had, it would not be possible this year (2019) either.
On the other hand, i hate to put different board revisions on the market to sell the same thing to the same customer two times, and i hate when someone does that and stops delivering firmware updates to the first version of the board with some silly excuses (yes, you know who i am talking about).
Sum all this with how much we were pissed about the RGB drama and the pain we lived last year, that we just wanted to let SSDS3 hardware die this way, just keep working on the software but not ever do another board revisions even we would not sell a single SSDS3 more.
So, back in late October, we were almost out of SSDS3 stock, so we had to decide if we would build another batch or just don´t sell it anymore. Then we saw that the rgb board addon and the audio board addon were mature and we decided to ask Voultar and FBX if they would share their design with us to make a copy/paste on our original design. We also asked to mobiustech for things he would change on the pcb design and general advice.
At this moment, we knew that no one would be happy : The ones with the old board would be pissed, the ones without it would be pissed, everyone would be pissed cause one only has to read this thread to see people only wants to not be happy at all, just trash talk about us, speculating but not hearing what we have to say.
A clear example is the UK guy that bought a neosd, got a refund cause he changed his mind, and on top on that decided to flame Todd all over the internet, so Todd had to ban him from our forum, cause : what the hell are you looking for once you got what you wanted ?
Back to topic : Voultar, and FBX shared their designs with us, we submitted a prototype pcb to factory with urgent status. It came in two weeks, i soldered it by hand, i shipped it to FBX, FBX shipped it to mobius, and they said there was an improvement there. So in the meanwhile, we lost the entire christmas sales of Super SD System 3, cause from the moment where FBX and Mobius said the board was ok, we would need 2 months to have a batch produced and we were already out of stock. We could have had a batch without changes for Christmas, but not a new version, cause this requires factory to design a new panel, stencils to be build once the new panel is ready and so.
So why we did this new version ? cause we wanted the guys fucking around with the rgb to have what they were fucking asking around all day long (or why you guys were moaning about it ? just to have it and come back moaning about we did it ?. Even we knew when they got this new board they would not stop fucking around with the same thing.
BUT above all things : we did it, cause it was the right thing to do at all.
Now : Sunday, 2:57am after reading all your comments, i think : is all the work we have been doing since last year any worth at all ? Some of you guys wanted us to be dead as company, it looks that what you really want is us to disappear.
I see the two projects we have been working at and that will be announced next month, and i think : do all the haters deserve those ? cause reading you guys, it looks like you don't really want anything else from us on the market.
Maybe i am really tired about driving 600 kms friday to spend 13 hours recording on saturday, driving back those 600kms today and coming back at work on sunday to deliver to our customers as soon as possible.
So today: now, i see it all negative and i am guessing if all the work we are doing just for the shake to have great devices on the street to play with, and sometimes if possible get a thanks back, is it worth at all.
At least, i still think there is a big group of our customers that liked Super SD System 3, NEOSD and will enjoy the projects that we will be announcing next month.
I just want to say, that not everything in life is about money but passion about what one does and love for what on does. Sometimes shit happens, and like on the good times, we are always here to do our best to try to have everyone happy. Just sometimes as this time, its clear that it's not possible at all.
So you all can blame us about anything you may like or dislike. But i don't want anyone else saying again we are only here to make money, cause this is totally wrong.
Alex
Sorry, but reply is in spanish, my english is very bad, and is necessary i reply.
Lo que me cuentas en ese post no me vale una mierda.
Que tu no conocieras o supieras es tu problema, yo en 1991 ya estaba viendo duos americanas y japonesas en casa de amigos, en sabadell (barcelona), tenia delante de casa, aunque suene a broma, un servicio técnico de reparación oficial de aiwa, que modificaban las duos con rgb ademas de las pcengine cores y demás, cuando aquí en España la gente no salia de mierdas pal, tarde, censuradas y desastrosamente mal, a 150km de mi casa, perpiña, tenias tiendas que tenían los lanzamientos de pcengine japoneses cada mes, en el centro de mi cuidad se podían conseguir las consoles plus francesas que tenían información de pcengine a paladas, en 1993 ya conseguíamos traer pc engine fan... para estar informados de todo y ya pedíamos y conseguimos de todo, y eramos un grupito de cuatro chavales, nada mas, y tubimos el sf2 o el dracula en dos semanas después de su salida en japón.
La excusa de yo creo, yo no conocía no me vale, y si hablamos de cualquier cosa lo mismo, si tienes curiosidad aprendes, si aprendes ves que aquí te venden mierda, cara, mal y faltaba de todo, si simplemente te conformaste con lo que te daban masticado es tu problema.
Tu que coño vas a decir sobre amor a un sistema, si no tienes ni la mas remota puta idea de el, sacar este trasto, y que fallen tal cantidad de juegos como fallan, es sencillamente una puta broma, en rpgs fallan un motón, y que falle el gulliver boy, para mi, es como si fallara el mark of the wolf o el metal slug en neogeo, no solo no es aceptable, es de vergüenza ajena, (podria explicar mil cosillas pero no es el objetivo de este post) bueno he tenido dos ssd3 y los dos los he vendido porque sencillamente, no los uso.
Y el que piense que una mierda de everdrive es para los que "aman el sistema", eso es un insulto, los everdrive, sdd3 incluido es para lo que habiendo tenido la oportunidad de comprar y tener, no les ha dado la gana hacerlo durante 20 años con los precios por los suelos y ahora la excusa es los precios altos, ahora mismo los compran un inmenso % para jugar a unos sistemas que no conocen y al final ni los usan... y eso al menos aquí, estoy hasta los mismísimos cojones de verlo.
Y te digo mas, se abran muerto todas tus placas y yo aun estaré jugando con originales en maquinas originales y yo amo el sistema, y eso que de mi grupo fui de los últimos en tener una pcengine, eso si las vi desde el primer día, porque alimentar a una negeo en sus primeros años comprando juegos de salida..., pues no daba el dinero para mas.
Tu solo fabricas un producto, un negocio para una maquina que desconoces y eres incapaz de entenderla y ponerla bajo su realidad y contexto en su época, porque como bien dices, cuando supiste de su existencia eran 15 años tarde como mínimo, cosa que no es mala, pero no me vengas vendiendo motos de amor o no se que.
Mañana me llega un nec PC-KD863G, y ojo en su día uno del grupo consiguió uno, pero he estado años y años detrás de uno, la sensación es increíble, tu tendrás que ir corriendo a google a ver que es... y no es amor, es respecto a una compañía increíblemente potente como nec, que es una brutalidad en su centenaria historia tecnología de principio a fin y hudson que sencillamente eran el camello que se mete, el, mas droga que la que vende, la pcengine es una consola incomparable y irrepetible, por factores aleatorios y de suerte, pero para entender eso necesitas saber muchísimo, y ante todo que no te lo cuente o internet o alguien.
Como era aquel anuncio... ver comparar y lo que es mejor comprarlo, eso hice durante 30 años años y me he quedado con los dos mejores sistemas existentes x68000 y pc engine y dos recreativas y tu everdrive solo lo volveré a tener cuando ni una maquina original funcione, porque las sensaciones de tu producto son un desastre y el audio comparado con el un scdrom2 o un ifucdrom2 es una basura, ya no comparado con el de un laseractive, porque entonces me estoy riendo un siglo.... por cierto el vídeo con un buen mod rgb también esta por debajo a lo bestia de cualquier maquina original.
Que te vaya bien...
I still want one.
