For a while I have been wanting to talk about the Amico again. However, everything about the Amico has been a bunch of small things that keep piling up. Things that seem weird but aren’t in the way people think they are. Like everyone thinks the NFTs make no sense, when they do. I was wanting to write something about the Amico using NFTs, and other companies, but there wasn’t a lot to write once I found the answer. Same thing with the CEO switch. I could write maybe 2 paragraphs on it, but not much else. The different offices? That one has the most the write about, as you will see, and could potentially be it’s own blog post. However, I don’t want to have too many things about the Amico on here and it sparked the research into the NFT stuff and more. So, here is a nice big Amico stew of things I wanted to talk about, but there just wasn’t enough meat. As a heads up to my international readers this post will be very technical. Sorry.
One of the biggest things people who are anti-Amico talk about is not needing offices around the world. From what I can see they have 5 offices. Two in California, one in Utah, one in Dubai, and one in Germany. For a small company this many offices is seems very wasteful, there is no doubting that. They do not need 3 offices in the US. The two offices in California are in very expensive cities. Those are clearly there because the people “running” the “company” live there.
What about Utah? The government of Utah offers tax credits and loans if you open an office in Utah. This is why if you look at all the tour videos of their Utah office they’re empty. In fact, Utah offers COVID relief funds to businesses suffering losses from COVID. This could by why Intellivision is making such a big deal about COVID causing issues with software and hardware production. The offices in Utah could potentially be earning them COVID relief funds. Since they are a private company there is no way to prove they are getting these funds. However, to me it looks like the offices in Utah are needed to get funding, and tax credits, from another government.
That’s Utah, why do they need Germany? They openly talked about getting the German grant money. We know the only games they have shown off are due to the German grant. They need an office in Germany to get that grant. “But why do they keep it?” Grants from the German government are pretty strict. Back in the day people used to say Uwe Boll was able to make money due to German tax loopholes and grants. The truth is he made money due to American tax loopholes and German grants. His movies were made to lose money so companies could have bigger tax write offs in the US. His grants? The movies were made in Germany and his crew was well above the 80% minimum German citizen requirement. In fact, he tried to keep it as close to 100% as possible and tried to cast as many German actors as he could. His production studio needed to keep the offices in Germany open, despite him living in Canada for some of the films he made. This seems like a random factoid but this shows how strict German grants are. A German citizen, who was making movies in Germany, needed to keep a German office to get the grant money. Tommy has never discussed the details for the German grant other then him needing to hire German developers. Intellivision might have to keep them employed, or pay back the grant. The money has to stay in Germany and if it is a grant for software development it must be spent on German software developers.
Partway through writing this I found out that the German studio, Wasted Studios, has stopped making games in 2021. It is possible with Wasted Studios shutting down that Intellivision’s access to the German grant money has been denied. Now all the weird money making schemes Intellivision had in 2021 and 2022 makes sense. Why did they sell those collectors boxes and why did they do a new crowd funding campaign? No one really knows why they needed funding that badly, but now that we know Wasted Studios is gone. It’s safe to assume they lost their German funding. Uwe Boll explained in great depth that the money for the grants couldn’t leave Germany and needed to be spent hiring Germans in that field of work the grant was for. I am positive they could not find a new German studio to work for just the grant money. Even Uwe Boll needed an American movie studio to fund his movies more so he could afford to film them. These grants are not a lot of money, but they do help.
What about Dubai? The only thing I can find out about the offices in Dubai is that Sudesh Aggarwal is from Dubai and he gave them a very bad loan. He is confirmed to work approximately .25 hours per week for Intellivision. That’s not anyone making anything up. That is coming from Intellivision’s own SEC filing, page 12. Sudesh is the one who gets $100 per console sold. You can look at the end of page 40 of the SEC filing for proof. (For some reason my theme doesn’t display pictures. Working on getting a new theme now. Due to this you will need to go to the SEC pages directly to see this.)
This loan stops the console from being sold at a reasonable price. A loan that automatically makes selling the console at $100 the exact same as if Nintendo was giving away Switches for free. If they sold the console for $50 then that’s the exact same as if Sony gave you $50 for a PS5. Another interesting thing about the Dubai offices is who runs it. A man named Sumeet Aggarwal runs the offices. To me it is weird that it is someone with the same last name, but I do not know if this is a common name in Dubai. It is possible that Sudesh had Tommy hire one of his family members to manage the Dubai offices since we can see he works less than 30 minutes a week. I feel it is worth pointing out that Sudesh started to work worth Intellivision on April 12th, 2019 and then Intellivision announced they had opened an office in Dubai on June 25th, 2019 via Facebook. With business planning, location scouting, and all the fun stuff that goes into opening an office I think part of Sudesh joining was an office in Dubai.
Do they need offices in Germany? Clearly they did, now maybe not unless they can get more grants. Do they need the offices in Utah? It really looks like it. Do they need 2 offices in California and 1 in Dubai? No for California and for Dubai it looks like they did to get Sudesh on board and his horrible loan that prevented the console from ever being sold at a reasonable price. However, lots of detractors focus on the offices in Utah and Germany. When they seem to be the two offices allowing the company to function. We know the ones in Germany are mandatory. This has always confused me about people who talk negatively about the Amico. They’re focusing on the offices Intellivision needs over the 2 they don’t and ignore the 1 that’s a bad investment. Instead we should ask why do they have the two offices in California and why did they open the offices in Dubai. If they moved the California offices to Utah then they would’ve saved tons of money in operational costs. If they never took the loan in Dubai the console could’ve been sold at a reasonable price.
Some even argue, “Why are they taking grants and loans from governments!?” Every accountant I’ve ever talked to has told me if you qualify for a grant, take it. If you qualify for a low interest loan from the government, take it. Most of the time you can weasel your way out of certain requirements, or payments, because “job creation”. As shitty as it sounds, it is a horrible business decision to turn down either. However, some people who say they have good business senses throw them out the window when it comes to the Amico. I don’t want to sound like I am defending the Amico. I’m just trying to steer people away from bad arguments that the company can easily deflect.
“Why are the games NFTs?” Oh this is a fun one! Government grants! (Aus – For a later example) ( US Gov) You can get multiple grants and loans from different governments if you introduce block chain technology right now. Why is everyone doing NFTs right now? Government grants and loans. I’m not even joking about this. Looking into this there are more grants and loans then I thought, some by third parties. For Intellivision using blockchain technology was more free money. Again every accountant I’ve ever talked to has told me to take grants if you can get them. Why are governments giving out grants for blockchain technology? You turn over parts of the tech to the government. This way they can study it to control it. It is possible in a few years blockchain tech will be full tracked by every government in the world much like P2P is now.
Now we get to talk about the CEO change. I get two birds with one stone with this one! Intellivision Entertainment is an LLC, not a Corporation. When you run an LLC there are actually a few titles you’re not allowed to use. Legal zoom has a great page on this. You also do not have a CEO, unlike a corporation. You have members. Members are owners of LLCs. If you run an LLC, as long as you’re not using some of the banned terms, you can call yourself anything! I used to call myself supreme lord and commander as my official title. Every week I would change it. Hell, we would change the title of CEO for shits and giggles too. Why? Because it didn’t matter. Legally the title meant nothing because we were an LLC. With a corporation CEO, CFO, CCO, and such are very important and legal titles. This is why shareholders vote on new CEOs and such. It’s a giant legal process. This is also why shareholders can kick out a CEO too. With an LLC you can’t. This is why when everyone was mad at Randy Pitchford for pocketing the Epic Games Store money and calling for him to be removed as CEO of Gearbox they were wasting their breath. Gearbox is an LLC. He is the only member and can’t be removed. For Intellivision Entertainment Tommy Tallarico is a member, it’s possible there are more but we don’t know. Them removing him as CEO does nothing because he is still a member, and will always be one. As long as he is a member he will have control over the company.
The CEO change is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Yes, there is a new CEO in charge. However, at the end of the day Tommy can fire him because Tommy is a member. I am sure what few investors they had were upset at Tommy and wanted someone new “in charge”, but he’s only in charge in name. As long as Tommy is a member he has power over the company. If there are more members then it gets tricky, but he still has power. Especially being the one who registered the company. “What about the board of directors?” First off, board of directors have no real power in a corporation. Remember when Reggie joined Gamestop as a board of director? Gamestop basically told him to shove it. Board of directors are there to help guide the CEO, CFO, and CCO. They’re industry experts you hire to help guide you in making business decisions. Usually they’re get paid in stock options; so they have some power through those stock options, but that’s it. Should they sell those options they lose all power. Second, LLCs don’t have a board of directors. LLCs are not even allowed to say they have a board of directors because it could be considered misleading to investors making them think they’re investing in a corporation, not an LLC.
In my opinion the CEO change was done to get more news and posts about the Amico going around so when investors looked into the company they would see the controversial figure was replaced. The more and more people made YouTube videos, podcasts, blog posts, and such the more they helped hide the truth. Tommy is still in power at the company. He is the registering member. Lots of people, including investors, don’t know how LLCs work. Since many LLCs use corporation titles, just in case they decide to become a corporation, it confuses investors more.
Speaking of confusing investors: Let’s talk about the unboxing video! The unboxing video seems to be confusing lots of people, and I don’t know why. It is very clear what they are doing with this video. Let’s go over what they are doing.
This video is being used to get people to stop requesting refunds. Now you can see the console! Now you can see the UI! Look it is connecting to the internet and using poorly translated text! This is doing nothing but showing that the console DOES (it doesn’t) exist to get people who were on the fence about refunds to not issue a refund. However, later that same day John Alvarado confirmed this was a hand made unit and is not ready for mass production. Of course they’re trying to be hush hush about that.
The next thing this video does is prove Tommy wasn’t lying about the smallest of things. Like the Amico power adapter. Tommy showed off the power adapter awhile ago and people kept calling it fake. This is why the video shows off the power adapter. “Look they were wrong, we do have a special power adapter!” Here’s the thing, branded power adapters aren’t special. You can buy a power adapter and pay a bit extra to get them branded.
Lastly one of the other tricks about the unboxing video is that it isn’t for customers. It’s for investors to look at and be tricked. “Look we do have a console!” However, if you look at the video there’s some stuff missing. It is missing the boot screen. We know the boot screen is supposed to have the running man on it. They’ve been proudly talking about the running man being the icon of the system. This boot up didn’t have it at all. In fact, it only had the logo that was already on the TV before the console was hooked up…. The other thing that is missing? The lights. You can see the lack of lights during the b-roll footage of people playing. They have been talking about these custom lights for every game for a long time now. It was also printed on the box, and John talked about, in the unboxing video. We know there is supposed to be a “concert like light show” when you’re playing the Amico but there were no lights in this unboxing video, except for 3 games.
Other weird things about the unboxing video? It is supposed to be a first time user experience, right? Why is it when the OS starts it recognizes John’s controller? This is a first time set up, correct? Is there really no initial set up screen for the console? It’s kinda obvious this isn’t a first time user experience, as my friend of Drink a Beer and Play a Game pointed out. Which then brings up the next part. Why the hell did they need to connect to the internet? It was already set up before. Why didn’t they set up the internet before? For an unboxing video that is supposed to show off the new user experience it failed to do so in every way possible.
I’m actually going to cut this off here. I’m going to date this part too, March 24th, so if anything happens after this date and it isn’t covered you’ll know why. I still have to edit, proof read, and rewrite stuff. I’ve been working on this for a long time. The initial idea to look into everything started in December and I started to do it in January. However, every week stuff kept happening, or was being dug up. I eventually ignored most of it and have been looking into LLCs, taxes, and grants. I’ve been researching the part people have been ignoring but making the biggest fuss about, weirdly enough.
While I was researching it I noticed people kept falling for these traps that basically meant nothing and were focusing on the weirdest of things. Hell, even I fell for some. Possibly so they can point to people and say, “Look they don’t know what they’re talking about!” Who knows why they do that. What I can say is, I feel sorry for that HDMI splitter just dangling there when they’re playing Cornhole. At least put it on the table.