NG-DEV TEAM?

[Wrath of Khan]

Ahh... a home variant too?
Sweet, I'll certainly start saving up my pennies, I think.



Sir, good looking out - very, very cool news.

Yes, its quite exciting. I'm awfully curious to find out more info. I'm in for a Dragonbox Pyra as my next game system purchase but I will be watching what happens here. NG-DEV team did support the failed retro vgs campaign, could this have inspired them to go it alone. The retro vgs is now the coleco chameleon, yes its changed its colours and distanced itself from the whole retro vgs fallout, ironic name.

[Wombat]

I would definitely like to see NGDEV continuous support for the Dreamcast, especially Kraut Buster looks really promising.

However from what I read it's highly unlikely that they will support the Dreamcast any further, their last two releases didn't sell well but did get pirated the sh*t out of them. I guess the Dreamcast is a bit of an problem for these guys, seeing that their neo-geo builds don't leak/get pirated (yet) but the Dreamcast counterparts almost instantly hit the WWW.

[dreamcast-news]

Last Hope has a lot of MVS - AES convert.

[mazonemayu]

I think it's just an economic thing, I mean why port to the dc & sell for 50 euros, when you can actually get hundreds of euros per copy when released on the neogeo.

[Wrath of Khan]

From Twatter- I asked:

Will any games developed for it be ported to Dreamcast - Fingers crossed. Thanks.

NG-DEV TEAM said: "We have no plans for that. It would require a DC2 or DC3 anyway. There is a multi generational leap in power"

And: It's an high end arcade enthusiast platform. Our focus is on people that play original arcade PCBs and AES at home.

Sounds like they are targeting the niche market thats willing to pay a premium for neo geo style cartridge games- to some extent anyways.

[shinerbock]

So, I think most folks here are aware that NG Dev Team seems done with the Dreamcast...here are some quotes from their FB page that seem to confirm that sad fact:

"Well, DC sales were dropping with each release. Pre orders of NEO XYX DC were terrible. While torrent downloads increased and increased. The development kit is very problematic too. We rather see our port future elsewhere, hopefully something cartridge based."

"Insulting us as (inferior) homebrew while being professional full time developers with several employees in the company and with more than 20 year experience is one of the many reason it's easy to abandon that platform. We just feel that DC is not for us."

And finally:

"We don't have a working DC dev setup anymore."

But hey, all we have to do is go buy a consolized MVS ($500) and then we can continue to enjoy all of their new games to the tune of $400 each...

[Wrath of Khan]

"Well, DC sales were dropping with each release. Pre orders of NEO XYX DC were terrible. While torrent downloads increased and increased. The development kit is very problematic too. We rather see our port future elsewhere, hopefully something cartridge based."

Why I'm disinclined to believe the above statement is because Hucast would never have beens set up if the above was true- Neo xyx sales were probably poor but surely hucasts games are torrented just as much? If the dev kit is problematic then how and why are Hucast using it? If sales were dropping with each new release then why has Rene hellewehger stated that the Ghost Blade sold very well?

The only partial answer I have is that the Ghost blade is dreamcast specific and at least uses some of the dc's capabilities which ng-dev teams games never did. Still, alice returns also hucast could be released on an atari st but its presumably selling- Leonas tricky adventures could be done on an amiga 500 yet it exists.

I'm not seeing the whole picture- I think they wanted to divert all their resources to their new arcade/home system, which incidentally is a lot more powerful than the Dreamcast, says ng-dev team.

I am interested in their new system btw.

[DCGX]

I don't know much about development, Dreamcast or otherwise, but Hucast develops their games on the PC and then ports them to Dreamcast. So maybe that skirts a "problematic dev kit."

I can understand the sales may not be there, but I think it's a lack of interest from consumers more than anything. All their DC games are shooters (even though GunLord is also a platformer), and realistically speaking they are all very similar anyway. Yes there's slightly different gameplay systems, but they still play roughly the same and look roughly the same. That is going to turn off all but the hardcore of hardcore DC fans.

To put it another way: I have so many shmups and fighting games on my DC that despite new releases in those genres on other, newer platforms and said releases being different in their own way, I have a hard time justifying buying another shmup or fighter because I have so many already.