Let's ignore that the UI has big "plug and play console from @games" energy and focus on some of the other issues. The biggest surprise/nightmare is that the system's game library is completely integrated with the store. There is a section that shows just the games you own, but the games are also divided into categories, with each game being potentially represented in multiple categories. These categories include, from what I can tell based on this video, every game available on the system whether you own it or not. The ones you own are in bright colorful icons and the others are faded out.

That's right, the home page for the system is literally the web store. Your library is totally integrated into the web store itself and there is no distinction between them, though it does helpfully point out what games you own, which is nice.

The obvious problem with this is, of course, that if the Amico ever amasses a large library it will be utterly unusable as an interface. Imagine if the Nintendo Switch, with literally thousands of games, used a system like this. Heck, imagine if the N64, with just a few hundred titles, did. The Amico may not aspire to have a 4 figure library but if it is at all successful it will presumably have hundreds of games, and if you want to look at games by genre this will be a completely unusable mess. It's just a bizarre design choice.

But that's not the biggest issue.

The biggest issue is that this is a console aimed at families, and the Amico will constantly be advertising every title in its library at all times on its home screen. Imagine how annoying it will be when Little Timmy sees a game he wants to play but can't because you don't own it. The whining will be unbearable. This is obviously set up to inspire impulse purchases but it's going to be way over the top for little kids who will see their favorite characters in licensed games (if the Amico does well) and will immediately start begging their parents to let them play. This is like if you bought your child a Lego set and not only did it come with ads for every other Lego set but he was required to look at those ads every time he wanted to play.

There are other weird decisions for this UI (Tommy says he wanted to make sure that there was constant motion on the screen so games play little preview videos when selected which seems really annoying and a waste of time and UI space) and it all looks incredibly bare bones (one of the major features they show off is the ability to change the console's language, which, I hope so, it's 2021.) But integrating the store and the library just seems so hostile and manipulative and gross.

I know that modern console UIs are full of ads but every other console lets you just go to your library and look at the games you have and pick what you want to play. It doesn't force you to navigate the web store to play something. Honestly I'm kind of shocked and I didn't think I could be. I expected the UI to be weird and kind of bad looking, I expected bare bones, and it is, but I didn't expect it to be so...crass for lack of a better word. Even Microsoft, kings and innovators in console advertising and using space to try to sell you stuff doesn't do this. Sony has the gross thing where it installs a single game you don't own as an ad in your hot bar but you can go to your library and get away from it.

This is gross.

As a side note the system also assigns a collectors number and virtual card and token to 'physical' games, which seems kind of shitty on its own, making you feel like the digital version is inferior, but it's such a laughably dumb benefit that I can't really care about that.

I don't think this thing is that much different from the PS5's interface. The store's right there on the home page, fully integrated, and is faster to reach than the "Game Library" tab, along with the news tab, which it defaults to when it turns on, and you got to scroll pass that to get to your games. I don't know what this Amico thing is going to default to when you turn it on. It might just default to the "My Games" section, and you might not even have to scroll pass the store. That doesn't mean I think this is good. Just that I don't think it's anything new.

If you ask me, the worst part is that they took their design "inspiration" from the Vita.

@brian_: It's very different.

Yes when you turn on your PS5 the first icon you see is "explore" which takes you to a bunch of news and new DLC for your games and some generally commercial stuff. To the left of that is the PlayStation store, which is its own unique app. To the right of that are your most recently played games and then all the way to the right is your library. Go into your library and you have tabs for the games you have installed, the games you own/have access to, and then further tabs for the PS4 collection for Plus users and a PSnow Tab.

If you want to you can easily just go to your own library and look at the games you own and ignore the store stuff.

Here the home screen literally is the store. The only differentiation is the color of the icons and apparently a separate section for what you have installed. If you want to look at stuff you own but don't have installed you presumably have to go through lists of every single game available for the system (or your collection doesn't differentiate between what's installed and what's not, which is its own problem)

The big differences here are in usability (having to sort through a massive list of games you do not own) and in forcing this stuff on kids, rather than hiding it away behind a store tab or in its own place. That's why it's subtle. At first glance it looks reasonable but in practice it will be both unwieldy and extremely bad for parents of kids. It's like forcing kids to walk through aisles of toys they don't own if they are going to play with the ones they do.

The Vita inspired graphical design isn't great, and reserving a huge chunk of the screen for gameplay videos (makes sense in a store but not for games you own) are bad choices, but they're just aesthetic. Integrating the store completely with the library is going to have a lot more ramifications. It's quite different from just sticking the store on an icon on the home screen that can be bypassed with the press of a button if you just want to go to your library.

What percentage of the time when you play PS5 do you actually go into the store? 10? 5? Maybe even less? For the Amico you'll be in there every time.

@bigsocrates: I disagree with the distinction that the PS5 store is a separate app. Nothing is being launched to get into it. I think it is just as fully integrated into the console's UI as this Amico appears to be. As long as it defaults to the "My Games" section, which supposedly only shows what you have installed, it doesn't appear to be doing any more or less work putting games in front of children than the PS5 does. They're both one scroll away.

Yeah, the PS5 store is not ring-fenced like they used to be on the two previous consoles.

@brian_: So I checked on my PS5 and I think that you're correct that it's not technically it's own app. Rather it's shunted off on a separate tab of the main OS. But there's a reason that despite the fact that I've owned a PS5 for almost a year and played it quite a bit (including platinuming multiple games and playing a bunch of others) I didn't remember this.

If you don't want to use the store (I prefer the web store) you literally never have to see it. You just don't press left on the main menu to access the store tab and don't click on the ads down below on the "explore" tab and you literally never see any store features. It's easy to ignore and it doesn't present similarly to games you own.

That's a big difference from the Amico, where the homepage is the main store page (not a separate tab in a tabless OS) and as far as I can tell if you want to access games that you own but are not installed on your system you need to go through the database of all the games and see their ads and they present as if you own them.

Even if they're both native to the OS and not separate apps (the Microsoft and Nintendo stores are both distinct apps) the organization of the OS presents the information very differently. It's clear even to kids what you own on PS5 and what part is the store, and you don't need to access the store at all to access your library of owned but not currently downloaded games. Those are important differences when it comes to both convenience and impulse triggering, and create much clearer boundaries for younger users (though the PS5 isn't really aimed at young kids in the same way that the Amico is.)

I have a PS5 and the store is located on the far left of the main menu screen after you sign in. It's not right in your face the moment you start the console. Furthermore, the games you own is not bunched together with the games you don't own. Not only are those games separated with your personal library, but you're told which games you own that are installed or not. Completely different from what the Amico is doing. A more accurate comparison would be the Microsoft Store on Windows I0, at least in its beginning stages before the updates. Don't get me wrong, the PS5 interface needs a lot of improvements, but I don't see how it compares to the Amico.

@av_gamer: According to this video, nothing is being bunched together in the "My Games" tab. That's where your games are. It's not showing any of the games they don't own in there. It's just their personal library, separated from the store. Once you scroll out of that, you get to the store pages, where they show you what you don't own. How is that functionally any different from the PS5 store tab being one scroll to the left on start up, assuming the Amico starts up on the "My Games" tab, with the store being one scroll above?

Yeah, the greyed out games you don't own just sitting there feels more than a little gross. Designing the UI this way seems incredibly shortsighted with how much bigger of a mess it'll get as the game library of the system expands. Maybe intentionally so (Amico conspiracy theories let's go)?

@brian_: There's a reason I used the term "subtle." Yes, objectively all current console OSes push their store and try to sell you things. None of them have the "purity" of something like the Gamecube, where all it did was let you play games and mess with settings and it was entirely focused on user experience and not commerce.

But I think that there's a difference here in the way the Amico only makes an organizational and small visible difference between games you own and games it's trying to sell you, and it might hide your purchased games among the ones you haven't bought if they're not installed (to be fair we're not clear on how this will work precisely) and force you to sort through everything to redownload them.

Even Amico boosters have already expressed concern about the effect this organization might have on young children who the Amico is explicitly targeted towards and who don't clearly understand commerce and especially e-commerce and could easily be lured by a home screen full of attractive icons that play a trailer when you look at them.

Is this completely different from the way PS5 weaves trailers and ads into your "explore" news feed alongside legitimate information about events going on in games you own and other stuff? No. There are obviously strong parallels. But it is different in ways that matter.

@imhungry: My Amico conspiracy theory is that this thing isn't ever coming out. I mean it might. I'm not 100% sure it won't. Not even necessarily 50% sure. But I look at...all of it and I wonder what's to be gained by launching it? Maybe you reduce your legal exposure from investors and people who made pre-orders, but they can't actually still believe that it's going to have any kind of sustainable success on the market.

The OS may look like the Vita's but this thing is less powerful and has far less capability than a PlayStation TV. And that thing launched years ago, with Sony's backing and a massive library of games and died almost immediately!

@bigsocrates: I don't want to keep arguing for this thing. A) Because I do think it's bad and grossly designed and B) because it's the Amico and no one's going to care about this thing the day after it comes out anyway. But the reason I think it's gross is more of a philosophical "I don't want my store and library integrated" thing. I just don't think it's any worse on children than the PS5 is. The store is just as easily accessible on the PS5, integrated into the console itself, and kids can see any number of games they don't own there. And I don't think it matters much whether it looks more like a "traditional store page" or it's just a bunch of greyed out icons to a kid. They see the game just the same. I think the only way this thing is significantly worse for children than the PS5 is, is if they default to the store when the system turns on, and force you to scroll pass it every time to get to your games. Which it might. I have no idea. And it wouldn't shock me if it did. I have no faith in this thing doing anything "right" or "well". I just haven't seen that yet.

First, I think this is still primarily marketed to gamers who remember the Intellivision from their youth. I would reasonably guess that a large portion of that audience would be adults with disposable income and more money than time. I imagine the subset of "Little Timmys" that would be interested in this would be small.

While I am probably the target demo, I have no interest in buying the Intellivision Amico. However, if I did, I would not be put off by having the store front-and-center. Don't make it hard for me to buy games on your platform.

I do agree about the concerns that, as the library expands, the UI could be a giant mess.

@bigsocrates said: Your library is totally integrated into the web store itself and there is no distinction between them, though it does helpfully point out what games you own, which is nice.

But there is a distinction. As you mentioned, the section that says "MY GAMES" in big bold letters and is the first thing you see when you turn on the console.

There's a lot to be skeptical about with the Amico, but I don't think this is a bad decision whatsoever. In fact, for a digital console focusing on inexpensive games, I think it makes sense to have a store integration surfaced like they do.

Also, is this any better or worse than when I turn of my PS5 and have advertisements shouted at me?

@wardcleaver: The Amico team has made it crystal clear that they are aiming this at families with young children. From restricting the ESRB ratings from even including Teen games to their marketing methods that is their target market. Whether or not they will hit that market has no bearing on whether the OS they are making is appropriate for the people they intend to sell the machine to. Check their site yourself if you don't believe me (scroll down to "AND WE MEAN EVERYONE")

@nillock: They put the games that are currently installed on the machine into a top grouping, that's true, and that's why this is more subtle. But games that are not installed are dumped down into this massive and confusing list of every game on the console, and they put all those games just right there looking very similar to the games you own right behind the main library. It's like having all your child's toys stored at a toy store. Even if they're in a locker at the front just sending him to the toy store to get his stuff is going to be extremely tempting.

Is it worse than the ads on PS5 (not sure what you mean by "when you turn of" your PS5. I assume you mean on and not off? There are no ads when you turn it off)? Yes. The ads on PS5 are obnoxious but you can ignore them and they don't look at all like the game tiles for software you own. Do I wish that consoles did not take up a bunch of valuable OS space to devote to advertising? I certainly do. The Nintendo Switch is probably the best in this regard but it has ads of its own. But complete integration is different. It's the difference between Amazon tracking you on the web and throwing ads at you (which it almost certainly does) and then you going to your Amazon digital library to download something you bought only to find the things you own integrated with very similar "buy it now" options for their other wares.

I also think that if this thing gets bought for a child, it's very likely that the parent is among the nostalgic group that grew up with these games, hangs around on intellivision-related forums and wants their child to have the same appreciation for the games of yore as they did. It reminds me of those conversations on the bombcast where a parent wants to introduce their kid to a certain diet of 'good' games from the parent's childhood.

@onemanarmyy: That may be true but I think they need to hit a much larger market than that if this thing is going to be commercially viable. I don't know what their minimum size install base is but I have to figure it's somewhere in the 6 figures, since the software is going to be $10 or less and there's no way to make money on even cheaply made games if you're only selling a few thousand copies at that price point. I don't know how many people care about the old Intellivision enough to be interested in the Amico but I'd imagine it's in the low 5 figures. Intellivision did not sell very well and it was on the market like 40 years ago.

@bigsocrates: Yeah i think once the Intellivsion die-hards have bought this thing at MSRP, eventually these things will show up as cheap game thingies laying around at various supermarkets for a more affordable price. Aunt Becky might not be willing to shelf out hundreds of dollars for 6 year old cousin Timmy's gaming hobby, but 80$ for a bunch of colorful simple games that don't seem to be about blood and murder might be a fun christmas gift to the mainstream audience that has no particular love for Intellivision themselves.

It didn't look massive or confusing. Within a category, the games you own are first, and the games you don't own are shown afterwards, clearly greyed out.

I'm not saying it's a masterpiece of UX design. But it's not as terrible as you are making out.

Besides, nobody is going to buy this thing so it really doesn't matter. :)