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About Jack Berlin
Founded Accusoft (Pegasus Imaging) in 1991 and has been CEO ever since.
Very proud of what the team has created with edocr, it is easy to share documents in a personalized way and so very useful at no cost to the user! Hope to hear comments and suggestions at info@edocr.com.
To All Sinclair Spectrum Software Rights Owners
Our launch announcement for the Sinclair Spectrum Vega has been a success well beyond
our wildest expectations. We set ourselves what we considered to be a reasonable target –
reaching £100,000 in our Indiegogo campaign within 2 months, and we achieved that in less
than 36 hours! This gives us the funds that Retro Computers Ltd need to cover all of the
start-up production costs, including the manufacture and distribution of the first 1,000 Vega
computers. Because we ran out of the first 1,000 Limited Edition units so quickly we are
now offering games enthusiasts the opportunity to reserve one of the Vegas from the second
Limited Edition production run of 3,000 units, which will secure them a Vega within 2
months or so of the first 1,000 reaching their owners. Anyone who pledges for our
“Kilobyte Plus†Indiegogo offering will be notified shortly before we are ready to release
the next 3,000 units and will then be able, if they wish, to purchase a Vega at the pre-retail
price of £100.
We are also very pleased at the number of Spectrum software rights owners who have
already given us permission to include some or all of their Spectrum games in the Vega
hardware, in return for which we will be making a combined donation of £5 per Vega to
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. This amount is fixed, and is based on our
estimate of what the trade (wholesale) price of the Vega would have needed to be for the
first 4,000 units had they been sold in the shops, which in turn is based on our estimates of
the various costs involved in preparing for and embarking on the manufacture of the
product.
All of the above plans will put Retro Computers Ltd on a sound financial footing for the
first two Limited Edition production runs of the Vega, and at the same time make a
significant contribution to the charity.
Following on from these successes we are now announcing our software rights owner
policy for production runs subsequent to the first 4,000 Vegas. By then we will have
amortized the cost of the steel tools used to manufacture the ABS case of the Vega and the
elastomer for the keys, as well as various other one-off costs associated with putting the
Vega into production. More importantly, we then expect to be manufacturing in larger
quantities for the retail market in the UK and abroad, so there will be economies of scale
that can be achieved in the manufacturing cost and therefore in our trade (wholesale) selling
price. We do not yet know what the longer-term pricing of the Vega will be and we are
therefore making our longer-term offer to Spectrum software rights owners a percentage of
our net receipts from sales, which is the trade price of the Vega when it is sold through retail
outlets, and our selling price (excluding postage and packing) when it is sold from our web
site.
Our longer-term offer to Spectrum software rights owners is this. We will make a donation
of 10% of our net selling price to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. In
addition we will make a pro-rata payment based on the same amount to whichever you
prefer – the charity or yourself. So if, for example, you give us permission to use 10 of your
games in the 1,000 games provided in the Vega, you or the charity will receive 1% of that
additional amount, since 1% of the games in the Vega will be your games. The payments to
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity will be made every quarter. The payments
to rights owners cannot be made so frequently because of the administrative costs involved,
so we will be making those payments annually, by the end of January for sales in the
previous calendar year.
We invite all of you games developers and Spectrum software rights owners to accept our
invitation to support the Vega project and Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity
in this way. We are therefore asking for your permissions to include your games in the Vega
ROM. If you do decide to accept our invitation please contact us via this link, giving us the
names of your games for which you are granting us permission, and to tell us whether you
prefer us to donate the additional amount to the charity or to pay it to yourself.
About the Retro Computers Ltd team
All those software rights owners who do so will be named, together with their games, on
our company web site, and there will be a similar credit on the software “Roll of Honourâ€
which will be displayed when users power up their Vega games computer. All those
software rights owners will also be invited to the Vega launch party in London next spring.
If you do not want your games to be incorporated in the Vega ROM please contact us in the
same way as above, giving us your contact details and a list of the games that you do not
want to be in the Vega ROM.
Thank you.
David Levy
[Chairman – Retro Computers Ltd.]
Our launch announcement for the Sinclair Spectrum Vega has been a success well beyond
our wildest expectations. We set ourselves what we considered to be a reasonable target –
reaching £100,000 in our Indiegogo campaign within 2 months, and we achieved that in less
than 36 hours! This gives us the funds that Retro Computers Ltd need to cover all of the
start-up production costs, including the manufacture and distribution of the first 1,000 Vega
computers. Because we ran out of the first 1,000 Limited Edition units so quickly we are
now offering games enthusiasts the opportunity to reserve one of the Vegas from the second
Limited Edition production run of 3,000 units, which will secure them a Vega within 2
months or so of the first 1,000 reaching their owners. Anyone who pledges for our
“Kilobyte Plus†Indiegogo offering will be notified shortly before we are ready to release
the next 3,000 units and will then be able, if they wish, to purchase a Vega at the pre-retail
price of £100.
We are also very pleased at the number of Spectrum software rights owners who have
already given us permission to include some or all of their Spectrum games in the Vega
hardware, in return for which we will be making a combined donation of £5 per Vega to
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. This amount is fixed, and is based on our
estimate of what the trade (wholesale) price of the Vega would have needed to be for the
first 4,000 units had they been sold in the shops, which in turn is based on our estimates of
the various costs involved in preparing for and embarking on the manufacture of the
product.
All of the above plans will put Retro Computers Ltd on a sound financial footing for the
first two Limited Edition production runs of the Vega, and at the same time make a
significant contribution to the charity.
Following on from these successes we are now announcing our software rights owner
policy for production runs subsequent to the first 4,000 Vegas. By then we will have
amortized the cost of the steel tools used to manufacture the ABS case of the Vega and the
elastomer for the keys, as well as various other one-off costs associated with putting the
Vega into production. More importantly, we then expect to be manufacturing in larger
quantities for the retail market in the UK and abroad, so there will be economies of scale
that can be achieved in the manufacturing cost and therefore in our trade (wholesale) selling
price. We do not yet know what the longer-term pricing of the Vega will be and we are
therefore making our longer-term offer to Spectrum software rights owners a percentage of
our net receipts from sales, which is the trade price of the Vega when it is sold through retail
outlets, and our selling price (excluding postage and packing) when it is sold from our web
site.
Our longer-term offer to Spectrum software rights owners is this. We will make a donation
of 10% of our net selling price to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. In
addition we will make a pro-rata payment based on the same amount to whichever you
prefer – the charity or yourself. So if, for example, you give us permission to use 10 of your
games in the 1,000 games provided in the Vega, you or the charity will receive 1% of that
additional amount, since 1% of the games in the Vega will be your games. The payments to
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity will be made every quarter. The payments
to rights owners cannot be made so frequently because of the administrative costs involved,
so we will be making those payments annually, by the end of January for sales in the
previous calendar year.
We invite all of you games developers and Spectrum software rights owners to accept our
invitation to support the Vega project and Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity
in this way. We are therefore asking for your permissions to include your games in the Vega
ROM. If you do decide to accept our invitation please contact us via this link, giving us the
names of your games for which you are granting us permission, and to tell us whether you
prefer us to donate the additional amount to the charity or to pay it to yourself.
About the Retro Computers Ltd team
All those software rights owners who do so will be named, together with their games, on
our company web site, and there will be a similar credit on the software “Roll of Honourâ€
which will be displayed when users power up their Vega games computer. All those
software rights owners will also be invited to the Vega launch party in London next spring.
If you do not want your games to be incorporated in the Vega ROM please contact us in the
same way as above, giving us your contact details and a list of the games that you do not
want to be in the Vega ROM.
Thank you.
David Levy
[Chairman – Retro Computers Ltd.]