Posts from adtbm in thread "[Poll only for interest] How do you think about buying a Mega65?"

Quote from Snoopy

Maybe it would be possible in addition to the complete Mega65 to sell it also without the case or maybe even without the keyboard for a lower price? Only the board with a possibilty to connect a normal USB keyboard can be sell for a lower price and so you can reach a lot more people who want to use the Mega65 but can not afford the price for the complete item?

That's why we still have and support the Nexys4DDR A7 100T board. Together with the Widgetboard from us, you have exactly that.

A fully working MEGA65 (OK the IEC port is not in yet, but that's something the community could add).

But even without the widget board (Which only adds the PMOD for Joystick and Expansionport), if you know a student who would order the NEXYS4 for you, you would be able to get the bare MEGA65 for less than 200€.

You can connect a normal USB keyboard, use the Bitstream files from our MEGA65.org page and of you go...

(That's how i came to the project)

Quote from everslick

Quote

The costs of production of the parts highly depends on the produced number of pieces. It'll make a great difference whether you want 50, 500, 5.000 or 50.000 parts.

So how will you calculate the costs of production if you don't know how much items you want to be produced? That's one intention why I started the poll.

I think what adtbm wanted to explain is, that the number of pieces is NOT really relevant, because they do not need to make money at the end. You are thinking from a commercial producer perspective (no offence) where you have to set the correct price before you even start designing a product. AND that price MUST NOT be too high to be successful, so the number of expected units sold is of EXTREME importance. OF COURSE everybody wants to have the MEGA as cheap as possible AND OF COURSE producing more makes it cheaper, but that's NOT the point. When the MEGA is ready to be produced they will decide a number (by whatever means [my guess would be by starting a pre-order campaign]) to produce and that number WILL determine an exact price to break even for that single patch of devices. if there will be a next batch, the price could be different.

IMHO that is the main reason for asking for donations for the case molds. It makes perfect sense, because the molds are the highest single cost and extremely relevant for the per unit cost and thus the most important factor regarding price at different numbers of units sold. This way they get this uncertainty out of the equation. VERY SMART!

All other parts are not that sensitive to numbers produced. I'd would guess when you aim for batches like 500-1000 pieces you are already at a good price point. making 3000 does not yield you much, and making 10000 is probably out of the question anyway.

All what I've seen yet, how the MEGA team handles different issues makes me believe they KNOW very well what they are doing. They have my trust, and my respect.

best regards...

clemens

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It's exactly like that !!!

Once we have the injection mould, we can check, how much a batch of 200 cases, 500 cases, 1000 cases would costs and then we decide how many MEGA65s each batch will be and we can say exactly, how much a single MEGA65 will cost.

We can't go ahead and produce a 10.000 cases and store those somewhere. We said from the beginning, that we will produce in batches, i.e. like Gideon, too.

EDIT: The chicken/egg problem only exists, if we would go for preorders, without knowing how many people would order.

EDIT2: Our manufacturer for the Keyboard and the mainboard already agreed, that they will produce in batches for us.

So we only need to find a company, that does the same for us with the cases.

I also think Snoopy had good intentions with it.

We (M-E-G-A) didn't start such a survey, since we knew that this would be only representitive to a certain degree

and more important we can't barter about the price anyway. Once the MEGA65 will be produced, then

we can say exactly ! That's how much the MEGA65 will cost. (Everybody who follows this project now for a while and

knows about the different components we are using, probably has an estimated price in his/her head anyway already)

So if you want to use this poll you are free to do so, but we will not use any of these results, since we won't agree

on the prices set in this survey.

If Snoopy wants me to delete it, it's fine with me. also if he wants to leave it running, we wouldn't mind either.

so if you want, you can certainly use this poll, but the MEGA65 team is not part in this, we don't use this data, and we

are not responsible for any values given in this poll.

So, yes it is a nice idea, but even if 99,99% of the people participating in this poll would go for "a personal limit of 300€"

we couldn't change it anyway.

We will build the MEGA65 for the lowest possible price but to the highst quality standard. This is our goal ! And that's what we promise !

So maybe it's possible to get an overview like "How many people are interested in the MEGA65"

but this is something we know already by the amount of money donated by so many people !

So we know, that the MEGA65 is a product that the people would like to see.

Last but not least: HEY SNOOPY ! You forgot Choplifter !!!!

(even if we are only a subforum on forum64, the rules still appy)