The Evercade and Evercade VS are retro focussed handheld and home consoles that were released over the last couple of years. The idea of it is that you can get loads of games from past eras of gaming and they come in collections on physical media. This is great for collectors and is also a way to continue to officially support the games and developers whilst preserving these games into the future.
But could this business plan and method of releasing collections of games be as much of a hindrance to the success of the Evercade as it is a strength?
Do you think the Collection style of releases holds the Evercade back from getting certain games or publishers/developers on board?
I was thinking about this and wondered if some publishers who released NES/Mega Drive/SNES/PS1 era games may be interested to see some games rereleased, but are put off at the idea of putting out several games on one cart if it created the perception that each game was of lesser value by being in a collection.
To use some bigger examples, Square-Enix still release classic Final Fantasy games at £10-20 each, so whilst back in the day they did put out some games on the Wonderswan which was certainly less mainstream, they may not want to have to put out Final Fantasy 4-6 on one cart.
Likewise Capcom once out Resident Evil 2 on the Game.Com but probably wouldn’t want to put Resident Evil 1-3 on a single Evercade cart.
Smaller developers, even modern indie ones may only have a few games in the catalog and they may fear that lumping them all together may reduce the value of their entire catalogue to one £18 cartridge.
Even though it’s against the Collection style of the Evercade, would it be better to see some bigger name games released as individual carts? Would that interest Evercade gamers versus not getting those games at all? And is there the risk that individual game carts would be rejected due to perceived lesser value?
What are your thoughts?? Would you be willing to buy Evercade carts that just featured one game, or does this defeat the mission statement of the consoles? And if single game carts were a thing, what if any individual game carts would you like to see?
