Commodore Press Conference webcast

[Peanutuk]

It's going to sink like a Led Zepplin. And I'm happy.

[7-Zark-7]

Yep, I'm sure the modern day PS2/Xbox console kiddie with P4 Mega PC, & Ipod player will surely thank their parents for buying a crappy joystick plugin playing old 2D games that they'll dismiss after 30secs!

Hopefully after the crash & burn these men-in-suits will leave, & the emu's & games/memories/retro sites will be left in peace to their C64 gaming memories.

[tin]

It's quite clear that the dickheads behind this are nothing more than buzzworded up thick nimrod bastards. Where else would you see so much BS about fuck all?

- CommodoreWorld.com is the official portal to step into the world of Commodore.

- Thanks to these synergies, Commodore will become one of the major players again within the family!

- Commodore fulfills the need where information and entertainment meet.

- Our success can only succeed thanks to a continual improvement in all company areas and offering innovative solutions bringing digital fun to the lives of our customers.

- introducing a solution what will bridge the consumer’s eGap. An eGap is the entertainment Gap in the life of a consumer.

- Commodores’ market approach is based on a solution that simplifies digital fun.

- Commodore is the total solution concept in it’s own unique way.

- Commodore tries to understand his lifestyle and translate this to a personal entertainment solution.

- Commodore will be an A-to-Z solution in the home- and mobile entertainment area.


and the classic:

"The idea is not to offer the consumer only A with hardware, but also offering B and C with the same brand to have the complete picture available."

do what? what's B and C? - did you just write that down as some corporate BS wanker said it????

With that kind of high power bullshit driving on the USB pens and crap mp3 jukeboxes, it can only fail.

[Amiga1992]

Hehehehehe.

My thoughts exactly. The worse thing is, this is worth fuck all! There's no possible success in such a stupid market move.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Ruud Baltissen

Hallo allemaal,


As some of you already know, yesterday the new Commodore presented itself to
the world. I was invited as well to speak to the community as one of the
users. I felt awfull when on stage :( 


Most important thing: I have spoken with the top of Tulip and Commodore,
four men. One thing we have discussed are the sites like FUNET and ARNOLD,
sites that archive ROMs and games. Regarding the games, utilities and other
non-system-ROMs they were clear: they considered that as there legal
property and as they wanted to make money with it, they would protect these
rights. And with reason, see later.

Personal point of view: I understand completely and accept it. (But I cannot
say I like it). 


The system-ROMs are another matter. They realise that the C= community is as
it is nowadays, thanks to you guys and the information that is available
worldwide. Three of the four agree that there has to be made an arrangement
or whatever where both parties, Commodore and we developers, could live
with. I spoke with the fourth guy, one of the original Tulip-guys and merely
money orientated, and showed him things the community had developed on their
own the last ten years: Retro Replay, X1541, IDE64, 64HDD and.... Marko's
CD. He was impressed and would think things over. But don't blame him as a
person, he is a nice guy IMHO, but one that has to run a bussines.

A small problem is that they want to sell or include an emulator with one of
their products. But they realise that the community as it is now probably is
not waiting for their emulator as there are some very good ones available
for free. With this emulator they have a reason to forbid publishing
systemROMs as wel but.....


I spoke with Darren Melbourne, the man behind Ironstone, as well. Ironstone
is responsible for the C64-joystick C= will start to sell around
october/november. I, of course, asked him about the hardware. 
The bad news: it will a single chip ASIC. I only forgot to ask him if the
ROM with OS and games were inside the ASIC or apart.
The good news: I know about who is behind the development of this C64 and
therefor we can expect quite some suprises:
- The new C64 will have at least 265 colours
- It will have higher resolutions
- It will have two SID's onboard
- The ASIC runs on 27 MHz. I hardly can imagine it needs 27 cycles to
emulate one of the original C64. 
- I asked Darren if there are plans to produce a big C64 based on this
print. So he revealed that, although it resembles a joystick, all
connections of the normal ports are available in the form of pads. So one
could solder his own expansionport, userport or whatever to this stick.
- Regarding the extra features: they want to publish the memorymap and other
technical details so programmers are able to develop new games etc. for this
new C64. 

The disclaimer: The above info is given by me as it was told me. I'm only
human and I could have understood some things wrong. Etc., etc., etc. 

About the person: Darren doesn't mind to tell me who it is but the person
self does because of a personal reason.


This C64-joystick is the reason they want to protect their legal rights
about the games. But they also want to stimulate the old community to
develop programs for this new C64, the community that has thrived on the
availability of ROMs and other information. And you won't be making friends
by taking away that where those friends are thriving on :)


Another point is the makers of hardware like Maurice Randall but also people
like Markus Brenner and the Czechs who produce the IDE64. Particulary those
who produce hardware that is to be connected to the userport or
expansionport. I didn't realise it but these ports are intellectual
properties of Commodore as well. So actually anyone building hardware for
these ports has to pay C= a fee as well. 
Regarding Maurice, he bought the stuff from CMD and Tulip/Commodore doesn't
know what agreement CMD had with the original C=. 
Regarding others: three of the four agreed that as long as no big money is
involved, they leave the situation as it is.
I mentioned the above in my speach and the fourth guy told me he started to
realise that actions against these people would loose them a lot of sympathy
of the old community as well.

The fact is: Commodore/Tulip thrives on the fact that the name Commodore is
know worlwide and on the sympathy created (merely) by the C64. So they want
to avoid any action that will loose this precious sympathy. But they have a
bussiness to run so some things are unavoidable.

So: 
- sites publishing games and related software owned by Commodore have to
remove it.
- sites publishing kernals/systemROMs are tolerated for the moment [1].
- producers of hardware are tolerated as long as there is not really big
money involved for the moment [1].


Rereading the above I may sound a bit pro-Tulip but it is a fact that they
have the law on their side. Yesterday I used this example: imagine you
inherit a fruitgarden with apples and pears, which has been left alone for
ten years. Because nobody cared, the neighbouhood got used to pick their own
fruit every autumn. 
You as the new owner, are only interested in the apples as the pears have no
real commercial value for you. So you can leave them hanging to rot or....
tell the neighbourhood generously to help themself with the pears as you
don't have a really need for them for the moment [1]. 
As you have the law on your side, most people will accept the situation. But
what are you going to do with people that still pick (thus steal) your
apples as well?

[1] notice the "for the moment". Lets face it, things can change in the
future. But I have been there and I left with a good feeling.


And now you can shoot.....


--
    ___
   / __|__
  / /  |_/     Groetjes, Ruud
  \ \__|_\
   \___|       URL: Ruud.C64.org

[IFW]

ROTFL
They own zero rights for games they don't have licenses for. That is a dozen games at most, though Epyx went tits up a long while ago, so their right claim is questionable and I was polite. If I wanted to claim some right I would have gone for a similar company, that no one can check on.
Each game belongs to its developer/publisher, not some company who produce hardware it runs on. This is even true for consoles, not just home computers.
They have zero, nada, nothing.
Don't fall for this pure BS.

Of course. Just ignore them! Only thing that can be effected is the commodore one.

[IFW]

It seems from the specs that they are going to sell a rebadged C-1 (that was renamed from Commodore 1 to C-1).
I think *that* will be pretty cool, unless it gets the C= curse now as it supposed to have for anything branded Commodore
The false copyright claims and spreading FUD around the community about their ownership of all games is a completely different matter.

[cebulba]

huh?
so many profanities in this thread...

btw:
You can buy TELEPHONES and DOCUMENT SHREDDERs in Germany...and other stuff, too - marked with the COMMODORE Logo...

[BenniP]

I've even seen CD-Rs with the C= logo.

[Unknown_K]

I don't know about you guys, but anything electronic I buy is usually the best bang for the buck you can find. I have no loyalty to any brand names, if another brand is better and cheaper I switch. So if I went to a store and seen Commodore branded cdr's and 15 other brands I would buy the cheapest that are known to work.

And it's not even the original C= logo

[ant512]

Originally Posted by Akira

As you have the law on your side, most people will accept the situation. But what are you going to do with people that still pick (thus steal) your apples as well?

See the apples in my field? They's my apples. And you see the apples in the field over there? That's not my field, but ah reckin they's my apples too. If you wants to pick them there apples, you gotta ask me first.

Originally Posted by Akira

Another point is the makers of hardware like Maurice Randall but also people like Markus Brenner and the Czechs who produce the IDE64. Particulary those who produce hardware that is to be connected to the userport or expansionport. I didn't realise it but these ports are intellectual properties of Commodore as well. So actually anyone building hardware for these ports has to pay C= a fee as well.

Bollocks. Commodore own the RS232 expansion standard, do they? Commodore own the D9 socket? Utter rubbish. Can you imagine what the Amiga hardware market would have been like if every Zorro board manufacturer had to pay a license fee to Commodore? More importantly, I'm certain that it is legal to reverse-engineer hardware to achieve interoperability; I very much doubt that anyone can charge a license to use hardware created independently using legally reverse-engineered IP.

I was initially tempted by this joystick thingy, especially reading about the expansion possibilities and the upgraded capabilities, but reading about Tulip's attitude makes me sick. I'm not giving them anything, and hopefully the Commodore Curse will see them off to an early grave. At the very least they could have followed Amstrad's lead, and made the C64 ROMs freely distributable (cf. the Spectrum ROMs).

[Bloodwych]

I'm with everyone on this now. At first I though they were just making a few products, like those hideous joystick things. That I could just about accept if they’ve bought the rights. I didn't realise however corporate pricks were going to start stepping all over the "peoples" retro community that's been built up and belongs to us. How many times have we seen this happening? They've missed the golden era of emulation anyway - why not leave the community alone? You can tell some of them realise they are on shaky ground in that statement; trying to play up to the community they are about to exploit.

Well, they are too late so why don't they piss off. Commodore had their day, money was made and the only reason a following and community still exists is because people have devoted free time to the cause. Now paper pushes want a slice of the pie after all the hard work has been done for free!

After reading those comments posted by Akira, it makes me want to puke. Why can't they just leave the community alone? WHY? I would post a long report on this subject, but I know I've been through all this before in a previous post. I'll go and try to dig that out because I can't be arsed to write an analysis of these kinds of situations again...........

[7-Zark-7]

Wow, tulip are claiming to try & own all the C64 games again are they, gee I'm shocked.
As we made mention of in a thread about tulips revival ages ago, their hand of friendship always appeared a two edged blade-& Darren Melbourne's interviews insisting sites like Arnold were safe have been exposed for what they're worth.
Gee, I bet the real 1980/90's Commodore wished they knew they "owned" all the games & not the publishers-mightn't have gone broke then!
So will they send backpayments to the likes of Andy Braybrook,the Rowlands & any other ex-developers stiffed by their original publishers?
These idiot men-in-suits deserve to go bankrupt,but I'd hate to see WinVice CCS64,Arnold & old games sites be forced to dissappear or go underground to avoid these slimebags making money off others' efforts.

[Fred the Fop]

Some poor souls in the know have said the eVic (ugh) is one of the worst mp3 players evar.
Evar.

http://www.idiottoys.com/2006/12/com...exclusive.html

[snowman040]

Heh, like reading review of MSI players But still I don't understand that moron that bought the player, is he expecting iPod for 50UKP?

[Paul_s]

I'll never forget the day when I first saw Commodore World.

Gah it's just like living through a bad dream - but it's real!

Should've just left it in the past to rest in peace and be a part of the great gaming history that we once knew. It wasn't about Mpscreech players or any carp they are churning out - it was about innovation, new ideas, sexy hardware, great minds and a community which brought us altogether under the same umbrella of love, peace and romance

[Fred the Fop]

Fuck Commode World. They dare to impinge on my lovely memories of the Vic-20 and current love of the iPod with the shitty name and product "eVic".

[Photon]

Yeah, branding crap is bad. They should make high quality collectibles, like they used to. (CBM Led Watches from the 70s, anyone?) Shit, or even pins and keychains with the original Amiga logo. I'm serious now. I would buy them