I want to start this by saying I was originally pretty excited about the Amico. I know this sounds weird but I liked the idea of a console continuing the Wii U’s gamepad idea, even if it is a micro screen. I loved the Wii U and the gamepad helped a lot with that. Already I knew the Amico wouldn’t do well because of this. However, I still wanted it. Then through interviews and small personal interactions with “CEO” Tommy I lost all interest in the console. Let’s go over this.
The main thing that made me go from going to buy it when Earth Worm Jim 4 comes out to never is the controller. I know this seems weird as I was excited about it, but I’ll explain. I have something wrong with my body. We don’t know what is wrong with it. Doctors could never find an exact medical issue and it is seemingly so rare they’d never heard of it. There are enough work arounds that “it doesn’t matter.” What’s my issue? I can’t use most capacitive touch screens. “What do you mean most?” I’ll have to explain how they work then why.
For those that don’t know capacitive screens work off of heat resistance, to explain it simply. Where you touch on the screen gets a heat signal that is different then the devices and device reads that. This is the easiest way to explain capacitive screens. A lot of them have different heat resistance levels. My old Samsung S3 gave me a lot of issues. So did my mom’s iPhone, and my girlfriend’s current one. My MP3 player is a touch screen and it doesn’t work with me a lot of the time. All my phones have given me issues. With the exception of my Red Mi PRO.
What’s the issue? If I use the screen for a bit it just stops working. No, the screens aren’t broken. They work for others. My MP3 player will work for my girlfriend or coworkers but stops for me. This happens because I give off heat very differently from people. They do not know why but my body changes heat drastically to where I am at. If I am in a 20C room and then people touch me everyone comments how freezing cold I am. If I am outside in 30C everyone comments how hot to the touch I am. Even as I am typing this on my laptop my fingers are burning hot compared to the rest of my hands. My MP3 player works fine right now because my fingers are so much hotter then the device. However, letting them sit for a few minutes they cool down and my MP3 player stops working. I’m sure you can see the issue now.
Some devices I can work with no matter what. My current phone, a Red Mi Pro, has a screen so sensitive that I have dangled a piece of issue over it touching just the tip to my phone. The screen reacted as if I was touching it. Which gets to my point. Not all capacitive screens are the same. They all have different heat resistance levels. You have some like my phone that are so sensitive that my pocket actives it all the time, or a piece of paper can. Then you have the more average, or higher resistance than normal, screens.
How does this relate to the Amico? Well, I asked Tommy on Twitter about the screen. He told me to DM him questions. I did. He read the message and left me on read. I checked back a few days later and the same. I told him that I do have a very odd medical condition that makes it so most screens stop working for me. Ignored. A week or two ago he was replying to Modern Vintage Gamer and giving him a shitty response acting like MVG should know better about something Tommy never once publicly released until then. I managed to get a response in this thread too but publicly calling him out over what he did to MVG and me. His response was that it uses a capacitive screen and then one of his “Amico Mafia” (a sad group of people) proceeded to insult me. Trying to defend Tommy and then get aggressive towards me. Even when I told Tommy that not all capacitive screens are the same, again. Tommy didn’t want to answer. His crony did and every aggressive attack after Tommy liked while ignoring everything I was saying. If this is how Tommy wants to react to people with odd medical conditions; without even addressing it as “Sorry, I’d never heard of this or didn’t know! Maybe a revision!” then fuck him.
One of the things that made the Amico controller so exciting to me is that it is a smaller controller too. I had a bad accident a few years ago. My left hand hurts a lot when using something too big. It makes playing guitar hard. It makes gaming hard. It makes using my phone hard. The accident happened after I got my Wii U. This makes the phone option for the Amico not an option for me either. You want to act like a piece of shit to someone who was really interested in the console, fine. Lost sale and all that jazz.
Before I sign off I want to address something at the top. I put “CEO” in quotes. Why? For those that don’t know Tommy calls himself the “CEO” or Intellivision. He used to say “President”. President I have no issue with. “CEO” I do. A lot of people don’t know this but to be a CEO you need to be voted in by share holders to a publicly traded company to represent it. President you don’t. Randy, from GearBox, does this too. Randy is not a CEO. Gearbox is not a publicly traded company. As far as I can tell, neither is Intellivision. What’s the difference between Randy and Tommy? Randy doesn’t publicly beg for money from investors. Last I heard, Randy only calls himself CEO when talking to fans. Tommy calls himself it in investor videos. While it is true when you run an LLC you can call yourself anything. CEO tends to be avoided because of its relations to publicly traded companies. When I was setting up an LLC I was strongly advised against calling myself CEO for “potential investor fraud”. “Supreme Commander” was okay. Ultimately I just landed on “founder and president”. I have no idea how true the “potential investor fraud” thing was but it was something I was advised about. Though officially for LLCs you are a member.
It’s funny to me that two people considered highly shady and scummy in the games industry both call themselves CEO when they aren’t. It’s also funny that the Intellivision website is just a giant ad for the Amico. Nothing about the company. Nothing about how the company operates. This really just looks like a scam. There is very little that makes it look like Intellivision has anything past this console. Even the old Elvenmonk Studios website had stuff about games we were designing, our custom engine, and more. It looked like we had way more planned after our first game. The company website was a company website and the products each had their own subdomain.
Also, Tommy, you can’t say you’re not an LLC. The bottom of your website says you are an LLC. You’re calling other members CFO. No, you’re not a CEO and they aren’t a CFO. You are all members.
Lastly, having stuff still in your website about how the Amico will be the “wild card of 2020” is hilarious considering it still isn’t out and all the YouTube and Facebook comments are highly unprofessional. Especially because everyone knows you can buy them. So is using photoshopped stock photos on your website and having the Xbox still on your “things people in our company worked on before” because the Xbox guy left right away. I’m sure lots of those listed have too. This would be like me using Kim’s and Mare’s artwork for my company. They “helped” work on stuff for me but they don’t work for me. It’s lying.