Funkade Personal Arcade System: Help a Student and Fellow Gamer!!

[jdfarmer]

 am a student at the University of Washington and need help on a Marketing Assignment. I am trying to project sales in the gaming industry, focusing specifically on Arcade games. If you could take a minute, visit my site and answer the following questions, you would be doing me a great service. All responses will be aggregated for the report and will remain completely anonymous. Thank you!

1) What is your age?
2) Income Range:
a)<$25000
b)$25,001-$45,000
c)>$45,001
3)Would you buy a personal arcade system as seen at www.funkade.com?
4)Why would you buy? or Why wouldn't you buy?
5)5)What gaming publications do you read/subscribe to?
6)Can we contact you later for a follow up?

If you are interested and would like to learn more about Funkade, please feel free to email me:

justin@funkade.com Thank you!

[mahuti]

yawhn.

I feel like I just left a time-share come-on.

[quarterback]

If you could take a minute, visit my site and answer the following questions,

Visiting your site apparently means come check out what you have for sale.

No thanks

[paigeoliver]

Bad time to get in the business of making Multicabs, licensed or not. I stopped making them altogether as I could barely even get $500 for them anymore.

[APFelon]

I'll bite. I had to do something similar for a class I had not too long ago. I won't mail it to, you, though.


1) What is your age?

33

2) Income Range:
C

3)Would you buy a personal arcade system as seen at www.funkade.com?
No

4)Why would you buy? or Why wouldn't you buy?
Because I built my own. Most people on this forum have or are working on building their own.

5)What gaming publications do you read/subscribe to?
Computer Games


6)Can we contact you later for a follow up?
Sorry, no.

A question: is this a "widget" or an actual product?

But like I said, I had a project like this one for a rhetoric class. One big thing that you have overlooked in posting this to this forum is that we are mostly here because we have either built our own machines or are working on it. That being said, you are missing one HUGE sales point: You failed to recognize your target market. Selling a prefab, prebuilt machine here is like, as they say, selling ice cubes to Eskimos.

Also, the problem is that someone who is in the market for such an item is hard to "spot" in that no one goes out looking for a multigame cab one bright and early morning. You must first let your market A) know that such a thing exists and B) you can provide one. You'd be better off picking kids off of your campus commons to do a focus group with since this entire forum knows that they exists and are in the process or have completed a machine of their own..

Another HUGE problem that you will encounter if you conduct this type of business over the Internet is that recently we have had a businessman  try to trademark MAME in order to eliminate cabinets such as yours. He has a gnarly lawyerbeast that he will unleash on you if he finds that you tied your shoelaces illegitimately. Take care with this.

Good luck in your class.

APf

[jfunk]

Heh.  Now I'm glad I'm not naming my cab 'Funkade'..  Might've gotten a cease and desist letter during construction!   

Besides, it sounded cheesy to me to use my own name in my cab's name..  But that's just me 

[RetroJames]

Funkcade(TM)

MINE!!!MINE!!!MINE!!!MINE!!!!!!MUWAHAHAHA

[GGKoul]

It's bad enough I get phone calls at home... now I have to answer these questions online...

[SirPoonga]

You guys obviously don't get what's going on.

am a student at the University of Washington and need help on a Marketing Assignment.

HE'S NOT SELLING ANYTHING!
Obviously the webpage is part of his project.

However, if you asked this about 2 weeks ago you'd get completely different answers from this community. 
1) Don't use the word Mame right now.
2) Don't advertise that it can play thousands of "arcade games".  Instead say thousands of arcade-like PC games.

Selling a prefab, prebuilt machine here is like, as they say, selling ice cubes to Eskimos.

No, this is the perfect place. Alot of people here buy prefab kits.  You still have to build the kit.

[APFelon]

He gave no indication that it was a kit. I was under the impression that it was an assembled cabinet with games installed.

Is there a market for that here?

APf

[SirPoonga]

He gave no indication that it was a kit. I was under the impression that it was an assembled cabinet with games installed.

Is there a market for that here?

APf

Of course.  There are people who built a cabinet because what currently is out there commercially was too expensive for them.
Also people will modify any cabinet.

[APFelon]

Perhaps, but I don't think that he will find as much success selling cabs here as he would if he pitched the idea to John. Q Public who knows nothing about MAME cabinets and emulation. It'd be interesting to see the results of his study.

My advice: Target the 25-45 year old market for a study group / potential sales group.

APf

[RayB]

You guys obviously don't get what's going on.

HE'S NOT SELLING ANYTHING!
Obviously the webpage is part of his project.

That's how he's presenting himself, but that doesn't mean those are the actual facts. Maybe this is market research for his business plan rather than a "class project". Notice his list of games are all legally available StarRoms games? If this is fake for a class project, then why bother listing only "legal" ROMs?

Then again, why does the cab look like Zaxxon?
 

[SirPoonga]

You guys obviously don't get what's going on.

HE'S NOT SELLING ANYTHING!
Obviously the webpage is part of his project.

That's how he's presenting himself, but that doesn't mean those are the actual facts. Maybe this is market research for his business plan rather than a "class project". Notice his list of games are all legally available StarRoms games? If this is fake for a class project, then why bother listing only "legal" ROMs?

Ok, if so, what's wrong with it   *IF* he is planning on selling something to this community, good job for doing market research first.  He might realize this community is already flooded with simular products.