Asumptions: (I mean 'aannames', have no dictionary here)
1: I assume that the product must be a commercial succes because until this moment I don't know af any person who will sponsor it with his own money.
2: The current group of MSX enthousiasts is not large enough to be of interest for a manufacturing company so the product must be sold also to a large new group of people.

When will te revival come? I say never. Why? Let me explain.
First of all, it costs lots of money to develope a good product. Then it costs even more to produce and its only affordable to produce when in large quantity. So before you start even developing a product you have to be d*mn sure that you're gonne sell a huge lot of them.

Second, you got to know the market and know what are the competetors. As I see it there can be two types of new MSX: a standalone gameconsole or a pc-addon.

Gameconsoles
The current leaders of the market are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Their products are good and lots of software is avaliable. Respectable companies like Sega had to leave the market because they couldn't compete. So, why will the new MSX be a succes if even Sega can't?

PC add-on
A PC add-on is only interesting for current MSX users who want to play cartridges on their pc and are willing to pay for that. But why would they? Lots of emulators are avaliable and every rom ever made is downloadable on the net. I think this group is very small and to design and build a MSX-in-pc will be very expensive. I see no way to comersialize this product by selling it in large quantities. It has no (or not enough) added value compared to a real MSX.

As I see the future of MSX is like this: we (the current group of active MSX-users) will continue like we do at the moment. Groups will develop new software and new (relative small) hardware, like Sunrise does. Some anual fairs wil discontinue and others won't.

MSX was a great standard in the eighties and early nineties, now it's only sentiment. Nothing wrong with that, in fact I love it. But lets face it, the world has changed and MSX is a thing from the past.

I think you're putting the bar somewhat too high. Of course MSX will not (and cannot) compete with Giants like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo on their own market. Each of these companies are selling their consoles by 10 or 100 of millions, which is something MSX has never achieved even during it's commercial years. Same goes for the PC, there is simply no need for a new PC standard as it is. But despite the dominance of the market, some "niche" are still ignored by the big players, I guess because they don't see it as profitable enough compared to the area in which they are playing. That's where I see a potential new system could find it's market place. I'm thinking of the amateur market, people who like to do more than surf the web, listen to MP3, copy CDs or only play games. People who like to develop software and hardware because it's fun, the people who want to express their creativity. And that community of people is quiet large actually, but it's spread among so many systems. You got the amateurs developing for the GBA with flash cards, the GP32 developers, the Palm pilot scene (quiet large and active community), the retro computing community (that includes MSX), the PSX Yaroze developers, etc etc. And of course there's the Linux Amateurs, and the PC amateurs scene with things like Blitz Basic (Hey Wolf

None of these platforms chosen amateurs can be considered a huge commercial success (well compared to PC and consoles that is) but still, it demonstrates that there is a need. Now if a "standard" could answer the needs of all these people, at a reasonable price, I believe it could have a decent commercial success.

Another approach, closer to what Nishi described for the one chip MSX, would be to convince many different companies to develop a different devices (pda/GSM/computers/portable consoles/gizmos) based around the same chip technology providing the "core" functionalities for processing, sound, connectivity, display, networking defined in a standard. That standard "MSX" chip could be extremely cheap if mass produced. Hardware compatibility with the current MSX would of course not be commercially relevant, just the concept of compatiblity and standard would probably remain.

In my view, both approach (standard for amateurs and "one chip" are not totally incompatible but the chances of seing it happening are thin I admit.

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1: I assume that the product must be a commercial succes because until this moment I don't know af any person who will sponsor it with his own money.

Yes, commercial. Every commercial product is 'sponsored' by its manufacturer and/or inventor and/or external investors. So nothing strange here, Nishi is a wealthy man, and influential in the Japanese business scene. If anybody can do it, he can.

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When will te revival come? I say never.

Dude, the revival is already here!
It can be clearly seen in the netherlands, where ex-MSX developers return to the scene and start developing again. This is no incident, it has been happening for the past year or two.
International collaboration is growing, new people start using MSX every day!
A similar revival had started in Japan, and the any new MSX computer/product (like MSX Magazine and the MSXPC) is a RESULT of this revival.

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First of all, it costs lots of money to develope a good product. Then it costs even more to produce and its only affordable to produce when in large quantity. So before you start even developing a product you have to be d*mn sure that you're gonne sell a huge lot of them.

Where is the problem here? It's not like an amateur group is trying to make it.

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Second, you got to know the market and know what are the competetors. As I see it there can be two types of new MSX: a standalone gameconsole or a pc-addon.

Wrong. MSX has never been a gameconsole and will never be one either. Neither will it be a PC-Addon.
The new MSX will be what the old MSX was, a mixture of game, professional, and hobby. It will inspire people to create, it will allow people to share their creations. This is a completely new market segment.

The old MSX was created to put a stop to the wildgrowth of homecomputers. And was successful at that. I invision the new MSX to put a stop to the wildgrowth of PDA's and wannabe handheld gameconsoles.

I think it's important for a 'new' compu, to have content.. for msx there are already thousends of games available..

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I think it's important for a 'new' compu, to have content.. for msx there are already thousends of games available..

Emulation or backward compatibility is easy to achieve these days, any new system could easily benefits for the existing library of one or more systems... as a temporary solution before dedicated software are written... Pretty much like what happened when MSX2 arrived.

To go in short: no reason for pessimism.

I fully agree with Jazzy. We won't see nothing like a new MSX computer/console/mobile phone/PDA. So we should continue our own way, and that requires two steps:

1.-Support MSX hardware developers, buying their products and coding programs to support them. Leonardo Padial, Sunrise, Calamar Group and other people should continue with their works, they are doing great things. Sometimes I have the feeling that some of them are critizised by flat-lined users with no skills at all. If you can do it better, please go on!

2.-Stop trying to make money with the MSX. I can understand that a good coder wants to sell their games. My decision is to program only freeware, but anyone should take his own decision about this.

I think that the Revival Project was done simply because it was a good oportunity for easy business. Somebody has won a lot of money with this project, and of course, he knows perfectly that only some magazines, an emulator and some fairs to support all this would be done. YOU CAN MAKE MONEY WITH THIS. But you will loose a lot of money if you try to make some "hardware". You need a really high investment, and nobody will risk nothing with this.

This is my opinion.

But there is more. I am against the new positioning of the MSX Resource Center. Supporting the MSX system is ok, and you are doing a great job. Your MSX platform is probably the best in Internet. BUT you should stop all the commercial activity. I think that it is not fair, and other strange thinks are happening...

Has anybody noticed that some games (I should say one game and a different version of the same game), declared as freeware, have disappeared of the MSX.ORG downloads database? And even worse, all the news about this game have been rewritten? Really strange. And the same game has also disappeared of other MSX sites. I have my own opinion about this. YOU ARE NOT PLAYING FAIR!

Guess what I am talking about?

I won't say anything else.

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Has anybody noticed that some games (I should say one game and a different version of the same game), declared as freeware, have disappeared of the MSX.ORG downloads database? And even worse, all the news about this game have been rewritten? Really strange. And the same game has also disappeared of other MSX sites. I have my own opinion about this. YOU ARE NOT PLAYING FAIR! Guess what I am talking about?

You speak about Guru Logic ... It's no more in the freeware database, but the news declaring this game freeware are still here :

http://www.msx.org/newspost1075.html

I've did noticed that ... and I'm curious to know the explanation ... Maybe a server problem ???

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You speak about Guru Logic ... It's no more in the freeware database, but the news declaring this game freeware are still here : http://www.msx.org/newspost1075.html I've did noticed that ... and I'm curious to know the explanation ... Maybe a server problem ???

It was my decision to take it offline. I have private reasons for this.

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But there is more. I am against the new positioning of the MSX Resource Center. Supporting the MSX system is ok, and you are doing a great job. Your MSX platform is probably the best in Internet. BUT you should stop all the commercial activity. I think that it is not fair, and other strange thinks are happening...

I don't think MRC has a new position. They still support the MSX system in every way possible.
It's simply a fact a lot of software has been made that's not freeware, and won't become freeware either. Making it available for sale again is a great initiative. Or are you promoting piracy?!

What's not fair about selling products you put a lot of time into? Everybody has the right to make available their softwares for free, for sale, or as shareware/donationware.

Other than that, do you think hosting a site like MRC is for free?! They have to make money somehow, and you should be glad they're doing it WHILE SUPPORTING MSX AT THE SAME TIME!

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YOU ARE NOT PLAYING FAIR!

Who? And what game are you playing to call anybody a cheater?

<edit>
Oh, and I want to say it's too bad you decided to translate your site back to Spanish. For a while, you were giving the right example by making your site readable to the international community. :/
</edit>

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>> It was my decision to take it offline. I have private reasons for this.

Thanks for the answer ! Of course, we must respect your decision.

To go back to the discussion : the Web Shop initiative is excellent, and I don't understand why some people criticise that.

- There's a MSX Revival and this can have different visages in Japan, in Brazil and in Europe because the MSX situation is not the same everywhere on the planet Earth

- We must also understand and respect the choices of the software creators. They can choose between 3 options (freeware, low-budget price, normal commercial price) and that's a good thing !

- The MRC has choosen for a rapid way of paying and downloading, that's really motivating .... you need a proof ? Since I've used the MRC Webshop, I've also pre-ordered the special Bombaman package !

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I fully agree with Jazzy. We won't see nothing like a new MSX computer/console/mobile phone/PDA.

Like Rikusu said: No reason for pessimism. I really wonder why you think we won't see anything new, because new things are already happening. As I have stated many times in other discussions, it's okay to have criticism, it's okay to be pessimistic, but please do base your opinion on facts, not fears. MSX Magazine 1 sold more than 50.000 times, MSX Magazine 2 is already a success in pre-ordering stage, the USB ROM cartridge and the MSXPC are the first steps of new hardware (even though the MSX Association admits the MSXPC should not be seen as a Real New MSX Computer).

Apart from that, there's nothing wrong with continuing our own way. That's why the MSX is so great. It's an open standard. No matter what happens with the Revival, everyone is still allowed to create hardware and software for the old MSX computers. Something gives me the idea you, pitpan, think differently about this.

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Support MSX hardware developers, buying their products and coding programs to support them. Leonardo Padial, Sunrise, Calamar Group and other people should continue with their works, they are doing great things.

I fully agree. It's one of the reasons why we try to follow their steps closely and try to report about everything they do. The more attention new MSX hardware gets, the better.

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Stop trying to make money with the MSX. I can understand that a good coder wants to sell their games. My decision is to program only freeware, but anyone should take his own decision about this.

Indeed, everyone should make his own decision about this.

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I think that the Revival Project was done simply because it was a good oportunity for easy business. Somebody has won a lot of money with this project, and of course, he knows perfectly that only some magazines, an emulator and some fairs to support all this would be done.

Again, I wonder what makes you think this is the case.

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I am against the new positioning of the MSX Resource Center. Supporting the MSX system is ok, and you are doing a great job. Your MSX platform is probably the best in Internet. BUT you should stop all the commercial activity. I think that it is not fair, and other strange thinks are happening...

First of all, thanks for all the compliments. We are constantly working on new features that could benefit the MSX Community even better, and it's very nice to receive feedback.

However, let me explain to you why we are deploying 'commercial activities', as I am the treasurer of our foundation. The main goal of our foundation is to support the MSX Community by all means, mainly with our website. You might have spotted that our website is growing rapidly. We have doubled the amount of visitors every year, this year we already have about 3 times as many visitors. Hosting our website is relatively cheap, but not free. And the costs are increasing all the time. Apart from our website we also attend and promote MSX fairs in the Netherlands and (sometimes) abroad. Even with travel costs (and flight tickets) being paid personally, not by the foundation, these activities now cost us about 1000 euro's a year. If we grow as much in 2004 as we did/do in 2003, these costs can do as much as triple (or worse, since we'd probably need to switch to a different, more expensive host then) next year. If the growth continues, and there's no reason to believe it doesn't, there comes a point where we can not afford keeping the website online anymore. For that reason we started a foundation and started to gather funds. Almost all funds we receive are personal investments from the administrators (Sander, Bart and me) and Anne de Raad (one of our webmasters).

Because we want to keep our website pop-up and banner free for as long as possible (if I'm to make the decisiion it will be pop-up free forever) we started other initiatives like joining the affiliates programs of Lik-Sang, Amazon and Animeplanet and offering our visitors the option to donate to the foundation. Our latest effort to support both the MSX community and the financial situation of our website is the Webshop. Over here you can buy old (and soon: new) software products that have not been available for a long time. Although many software is available as freeware there are also developers and publishers who don't want to declare their products freeware. Instead of not giving people the opportunity to use these software titles (legally), we started an initiative that makes it possible to make these titles available again. Keep in mind we earn virtually nothing on this webshop. 10% a title, with an average price of 4,99. That's 50 cents a transaction. You can hardly call that commercial, can you? So, we're doing three things at a time

- Making more software titles available to the MSX Community
- Earning a very small amount of money for our foundation, used to keep the website online
- Giving developers of MSX Software the opportunity to sell their software to a large audience again.

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Has anybody noticed that some games (I should say one game and a different version of the same game), declared as freeware, have disappeared of the MSX.ORG downloads database?

Even worse, more titles were removed from the downloads database. In the case of Guru Logic it was indeed Chaos' own personal decision to do so. A decision we have to respect, especially if you know the reasons why. (And you know the reasons why, so starting this discussion on a public forum is quite unfair indeed, Robsy).

Point is, we are being watched closely by many Japanese companies like MSX Association, Konami, Falcom, Aiky, Microcabin, etc. etc. etc. It is a well known fact that some of these companies do not like it when their ideas, music or graphics are ripped and used in other products. We have received a few mails from several of the companies mentioned above about products we hosted in our freeware downloads database. Although these were all very friendly, polite emails we could have been in serious trouble.

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And even worse, all the news about this game have been rewritten? Really strange. And the same game has also disappeared of other MSX sites. I have my own opinion about this. YOU ARE NOT PLAYING FAIR!

I'm not the one who rewrote the newsposts you're talking about (I think), but indeed from time to time we browse our archives to correct spelling, add links to affiliates and sometimes even update a link or two, to keep the contents of the posts in our archive as valueable as possible. No one benefits from a website with 80% dead links.

In conclusion, like you said, everyone has to make his own choice about what to think of the MSX Revival. Every software developer has the choice to release (or declare old) products as freeware, or selling it, e.g. self, at Sunrise and/or in our Webshop. Everyone can choose to 'join' the MSX Revival or not.It is your own choice to offer or buy MSX Software in the MRC webshop or not. No matter what choice the MRC staff makes, we will always try to report about everything that happens in the MSX Community, be it freeware, commercial, opensource, pro-revival, anti-revival. As long as it isn't getting us in trouble (e.g. infringing copyrights) we will report about it. Everyone can browse our news archive to see the proof of that.

I hope you and other visitors of the MRC now know why we are so 'commercial', all of a sudden. We always like to receive suggestions, so if you know better ways to gain money that will ensure a safe future for this website, don't hesitate to let us know.

Hum!

I have to apologize for my message yesterday. I was really upset for other personal reasons not related with the MSX community and somehow all my bad mood came up when I started to type a message. I can hardly believe that I wrote that message, I am so sorry.

I am a bit sceptical about all the MSX revival project, as I exposed many times in this forum, that's all.

And I agree that you, people from the MRC, are doing an excelent job. About all the other subjets, it's only some kind of paranoia, I'm sorry to bother you. Please accept my apologies.

About my site, now it is offline. I had more that 5200 visits since March, but the problem is that most of the visitors that gave me feedback were spanish or brazilian. The same happens with MSXdev'03, that is still going, of course. I hope to redesign the pages in not more than a week, and after that, I have to consider if I translate them to spanish or not.

Kind regards,

Eduardo Robsy

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About my site, now it is offline. I had more that 5200 visits since March, but the problem is that most of the visitors that gave me feedback were spanish or brazilian. The same happens with MSXdev'03, that is still going, of course. I hope to redesign the pages in not more than a week, and after that, I have to consider if I translate them to spanish or not.

I do hope you will keep the site English, because there is real interest in the site, not only from Spanish and Brasilian people.

Why are some ppl so against charging a fair price for an msx product?

Imagine that someone, or some group makes a game that equals sd-snatcher in scope and artwork..? Well, sd-snatcher costed about 90euros new (or something like that) And ppl bought it. Theoreticly, you could ask at least 40euros for such a game when you are guaranteed to enjoy the same fun, compared to sd-sn.

40E might be a bit heavy, but 20 or 25 should be agreeable.. I mean, a DVD or a CD also costs this much, and I'm sure everyone once bought a DVD or CD that was less enjoyable than a good game.

The plastic bags of the local bookshop here has a nice line printed on it: "if a book's worth reading it, then a book's worth buying it".

I mean, most of the sceners from 10yrs ago are now older/richer, right? There's no excuse for copying a product that you REALLY enjoy, if you can easily buy it. Ofcourse, if you don't like the game, but are just collecting it because you're an msx-completist, then imo it's less of an issue.. ( or does this rise another discussion? )

If a game turns out to be a large-scale project with excellent artwork/story/gameplay/packaging, then I don't see a reason charging only 7..15 euro for it.