Mr. de Vries,

I read your Company presentation, but I don''t understand something.

The game Starminer (lite version) is for so far only sublicensed to eGames, placed on there two games collections (a games collection red edition with 50 games total and on the space arcade collection with 11 games total) and finally as download version on there site.

How much do Crystal take of the royalties in this case of sublicense.

By the way Starminer isn''t sublicensed to Activision Value for so far I know.

But this below is what I don''t understand about Starminer?

There is said by you (I think also by developer) that the game WILL BE placed on a stand alone cd rom (jewel case).
I don''t understand this, because in the presentation there is mentioned that the game IS ALREADY a best seller with 150.000 pre orders. How is that possible if the game ISN''T sold standalone in retail? I don''t understand this.

By the way why wasn''t Starminer placed on a jewel case after it
was reviewed and the contracts were signed? Because there are
so many months over. And the developers earns are very low for so far. The sublicense isn''t important in the first place, the jewel case is important. The sublicense comes on the second place in my opinion. How long will it take to place a game on a jewel case? I saw the game Starminer a very while ago on the eGames site. So I don''t understand why the game isn''t placed yet on a jewel case. So the developer has to wait all those months
to see if his game possible will be placed on a jewel case. And strange enough in the presentation is mentioned that the game is a bestseller already.


"This game retails at $9.95 in a jewel case and is one of our best selling products with 150.000 pre orders".

By the way for general information, eGames goes only furter with a collection cd rom, when at least 50.000 units are sold in the first year. When it isn''t it will be stopped, because there is no breakeven.

Regards,

Spikey

I went to the Dixons and some other stores today, but I couldn''t find PC games (bestseller Dweebs and others) of Crystal Interactive (or the Nutridata label). I also asked the staff of the stores if it is maybe sold in another store (in another place) of them, but the answer was no. So the whole retail chain doesn''t heard of Crystal Interactive (Nutridata) or the mentioned PC games.

How is that possible if you say that you sold PC games to them?

I am getting sooooooo tired of this!!!

Some of you guys just don''t seem to gety the point here... Anyway, I''ll explain AGAIN!!!!

Anonymous 1: OEM is "Orginal Equipment Manufacturer" and all of our trade leads are company secrets. But you can think of some hardware manufacturers based in Asia + some local companies. And yes, Star Miner WILL be a jewel case.

Anonymous 2: We ALWAYS place the logo of a developer on the packaging if he/she provides one to us. In most cases we have to request their logo by ourselves even.

Diragor: We always show the mock-up box art to the developer. They can voice their opinion and request changes.

Anonymous 3: We''re not a public company, but a privately owned one. eGames is public (they''re on the NASDAQ). Need I explain more?

Spikey: Okay, ONCE more then... Star Miner has PRE-orders (note the subtle "PRE" in the sentence!). This means we''re preparing it for release and already have 150.000 orders from retailers. This is a so blatantly obvious explanation that I really shouldn''t bother answering any other questions you asked relating to this, but then again I''m not a bad guy. Star Miner was lined up for release before our takeover by Nutridata. As takeovers go you never get any work done I guess, so we had to postpone everything until that time. This also means we did not ship new products for quite some time. Hence the explanation you won''t find many current products in the stores. Our company was under review, assets temporarily frozen etc.

Anonymous 4: One word: WHOLESALERS! Ever heard of this? We do not sell directly into stores in Europe, but through other companies. Dweebs for example is available as a 20-level version in a jewel case. Dixons has been added to our list of stores only recently since we''re essentially an American company (Duh!).

Sorry if I seem too emotional again here but some of you guys seem to question everything I say without checking it out first. So much paranoia can kill you, did you know that?

Anyway, I''m completely fed up with answering questions (some of these questions are quite good though ) and I''m only going to answer E-mail questions by people who do not try to discredit me and my company anonymously. I''m available on alexdv@nutridata.com.

Sincerely,

Alex de Vries
http://www.crystal-interactive.com

Hey kijk, een Nederlander

I phoned the head office, purchase department of Dixons in UK, but they never heard of Crystal Interactive or Nutridata. Also they never heard of the mentioned titles. Also I phoned the head offices of the mentioned retailers in Holland. Like Intertoys, they never heard about Dweebs or your company. Also in Germany I did the same. Same respons. So even if you sell it through a distributor. On the package the name/logo of the publisher is mentioned and also the name of the title. I can't explain why nobody heard of your company and titles.

So how can we trust you?

Also the Crystal Interactive website doesn't look like very proffessional, when I compare it with the sites of Valusoft, Expertsoft and eGames.

No offense by the way.

Edited by - spikey on June 8, 2000 10:34:06 AM

Yeah, your website looks like it''s been designed by a 5-year old, and the very fact that you''re so actively chasing up developers, plus the fact that I''m pretty sure a couple of those earlier anonymous posts were from you (same writing style - can this be checked, GD staff?), leads me to think you might be less than trustworthy.

Very nice. The CEO of a publishing company comes on here, subjects himself to a huge barrage of questions, is more openly helpful and forthright than anybody else has been about the publishing business on this board, and you thank him with insults and conspiracy theories.

Ok, I have had it...
There is no way in hell I would EVER come back to this board or thread if I was CEO. He has given more info, and the same info at that OVER AND OVER AND OVER, then he has ever had too. He answers everyones questions in full and in my opinion has never tried to hide anything. He has been up front about the takeover of the company by nutridata and everything else that quite frankly has little to no impact on us as developers....strike that last comment, I am sure half of you who are crying and complaining are no where near being developers yourself, you''re the kind of people who have nothing better to do then post complete crap on bulletin boards and waste your whole day(and the few minutes of the day I scan over the gamedev boards) surfing the net and get very little actual programming done. It''s actually pretty damn simple, if you don''t want to use Crystal-Interactive to publish your first games then don''t but I don''t really like having to waste my time reading over complete crap posted by overly paranoid posters....

And spikey, yes it is a big conspiracy against you and other developers to take all they games we put out in the 2-3 month time frame and put them in a back room somewhere where nobody will ever see or hear from them again......so pathetic....

IF something did happen where i spent 2 months developin a game in my spare time and i sent it in to get published and it never did get published it definitaly would not kill me, I have a job and don''t care if I ever make a dime in game developement, my current job more then provides the lifestyle I love.

since I am done with conspiracy theories and speculation I will take a little break from this thread

that was my post by the way