Just now, BruceMcF said:
Tried before in this context as in releasing the FPGA simulation of a retro computer family before the first actual member of that family. Really, that hasn't been done before.
Also releasing them simultaneously hasn't been done before either.
As for releasing the FPGA simulation of a retro system either with or without a turbo mode, both have been tried, both have successes.
Fair enough. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
This goes back to what I've said on the Monster Thread(TM). Everyone has an opinion of what they personally want which is authoritative. Many have an opinion as to whether this is good / bad / indifferent to the X16, but those are not authoritative. It is gut instinct.
I read some posts from people bemoaning how this is going to fragment the ecosystem and their hard work is going to be for nothing. I may not have sufficient imagination, but I do not see this ever being sufficiently successful for anyone to make a living based on their ability to release software for these platforms. I don't think it was never going to sell in a quantity to make that possible. I could be wrong, but based on that belief, I don't see how X8 fragments the community, especially given just how similar the X8 and X16 will be programmatically. Writing a single program that can run on both is not going to be like the difference between VIC-20 and C64, much less PC vs Mac. The program can be written to run on both, or some clever conditional compilation / assembly can be used to build two binaries that target the different platforms.
I feel bad for international fans of the platform who have a much harder time importing and potentially dealing with currency conversion issues. I do not think a $50 X8 is going to be the roadblock that keeps someone from buying an X16. If anything, the X8 builds an ecosystem faster and puts more machines in more hands because people who won't buy a $200 or $300 X16 might likely buy an X8. Some may choose to only target the X8, just as many decided to target the C64 over the superior C128. That didn't stop the C128 from selling 5.7M (or so I've read).
Obviously, today, Xanything isn't going to sell 1M units.
In the end, if people want to try to make a buck selling software, then IMO they should be begging for the X8 to be released, because that's going to build a userbase most quickly at the expected price point.