Action53 vol3 CIB survey: trad cardboard vs bitbox

I've received some quotes for printed materials. M-Tee requested we consider a traditional box print shop he's had good experience with in the past. The price per box is a little higher than last volume, but quality should be improved. The entry point for traditional boxes of $500 still remains similar to last volume. So far we've sold 63 CIB copies of volume 2, and we had ~20 contributor CIB copies, so 100 boxes should be a good minimum qty to order this time. However, once we've ponied up the $500 for 100 copies, it only costs a small amount to double the quantity and get enough to cover our sales for the foreseeable future.

100 boxes = $5.00 each - $500 investment
150 boxes = $3.65 each - $550 investment
200 boxes = $2.85 each - $570 investment
250 boxes = $2.50 each - $625 investment
500 boxes = $2.25 each - $1125 investment

If we go traditional box route, I'm thinking 200 copies should be a good qty. It's about the sweet spot of only $70 more than 100 copies, and should be plenty to cover sales for more than a year.

We have ~30 contributor copies to hand out CIBs. Then we could use up ~50 boxes to help recover the costs of printed materials. That would use up 80 boxes at launch, and ~120 boxes to cover sales for 1-2 years.

Alternatively we could simply use stoneagegamer's bitboxes. I already stock these for other titles I publish, and can print the inserts myself in house. With shipping costs of the bitboxes and printing the cost comes to ~$2.50ea. This option has the benefit of not requiring upfront investment and guessing how many copies to purchase. The per unit cost is comparable to 250 traditional boxes. So bitboxes are the simpler and lower cost option, but lack the fact that they're packaged like games were 30 years ago. Some appreciate the fact that bitboxes are significantly more practical and useful if you're actually using it to store the game when not in play however.

I'm impartial to which option we choose. But if we opt for traditional boxes, I'll push that we also have offer 25-50 limited edition numbered copies to the public for a $10-20 premium. I will also say that this poll will not necessarily be the final decision maker on what route we go, especially if the vote count is low. Mostly looking for input from the community to see if we feel strongly one way or the other. I'm thinking it would be a good idea to put a poll up on NA as well, but I'm fairly certain those guys will vote traditional boxes.

EDIT: I'm also curious if anyone has input on which option we choose for 60pin famicom version's box. I've heard the sega bitboxes fit famicom carts well, I purchased a sample to try which should arrive later this week. Assuming they fit, that would be a good option for famicom CIBs. If we use bitboxes for 72pin, we'll certainly use them for 60pin as well. However if we spring for traditional boxes it's possible we could use them for famicom as well. I'd just have to use several/bigger styro block to keep it from being too loose I suppose. I think the bitboxes are a better representation of the clamshell cases that were originally used to publish famicom games years ago. It would be viable to release 72pin in traditional box, and 60pin in bitbox.

Master System games 30 years ago came in plastic clamshell keep cases. So did most cartridges for the Genesis, starting roughly 28 years ago.

Yes, I was speaking specifically to NES games though.

NA survey thread created.

While CIBs are extremely beautiful and stylish, I voted for bitboxes as I find them more suitable for long term storage and conservation. They are also less fidly if you are going to actually use the cart to play the games. Opening and closing CIBs repeatedly will most likely end up damaging and loosening the flip cover. Accidental drops may squish the edges. I have a toddler who loves to sneak into my game room and fiddle with dad's stuff, so I might be a bit biased

I missed out on buying the previous volumes but I'm going to make an extra effort to get thins one and I'd prefer it in the more durable option, from which it sounds like it would be the bitbox option.

Actually, thanks for bringing bitboxes to my attention. Most, if not all of my NES collection are just loose carts while pretty much all of my Master System and Mega Drive collection still have their clamshell cases.

Having my NES* collection sitting next to them along with my MVS shockboxes will make for one tidy display.



* And SNES. The SNES bitboxes fit both US and rest of the world carts.

EDIT: I see that Action53 vol. 2 is still available. It'd be super if it had a bitbox option.

Interesting how the NA crowd all want the traditional boxes. I'm torn myself. I really like the one bitbox I have, but it doesn't fit with the rest of my collection.

Maybe people who will play the games vs. people who will just add it to their collection?

Naturally, CiBs are more beautiful and look great, but certainly bitboxes endure more "action" I'm sure I'll be putting mine in and out the box quite a lot of times to play the games.

Anyways only 11 people have voted here.

I haven't -- I'm completely happy with whatever everyone decides, so I chose not to vote

90% of them are going to play at most once or twice then shelve it forever, it's NintendoAge.
Not that I'm complaining about them voting cardboard en masse, I'd prefer something more durable but for me it's fine either way.

If CIB is the majority vote/demand, and BitBox has no upfront cost, would a large run of CIB and a small run of BB be viable?

As far as I know you have to make somewhat large runs of CiBs to make them affordable as per-unit basis.

Which (i think) is only a problem if BB edition would significantly eat into the sales of CIBs.

I haven't voted, but my normal mode when buying homebrew is cart only. A BB would be neat though, especially with m-tee's artwork on it. So i'd be a type of buyer who wouldn't consider buying CIBs anyway, but would consider buying a BB. If there's more people of a similar mindset (which the poll doesn't really cover), then that could potentially cover producing both, but with different order sizes.

So summing up votes between NA & nesdev, traditional cardboard overwhelmingly won out over bitbox. nesdev favored bitbox, but had far less votes than NA. Bitbox preference on nesdev appears to be mostly for personal reasons as people here like the durability/function of the bitbox for their own personal use.

The limited edition run will cover the initial investment for traditional cardboard, and it won on votes, so the current plan is to publish NES CIBs using traditional cardboard.

However, it doesn't make much sense to use traditional cardboard for the 60pin famicom release, and I didn't get much input on how to publish famicom CIB's. So I'm planning to use bitboxes for famicom CIBs. I heard sega bitboxes work great for famicom carts, so I purchased a sample to test and it a perfect fit.

Good news is the bitbox inserts are the same size for both sega/famicom and NES bitboxes. Which means I'll have the ability to relatively easily take what was printed as a bitbox insert for famicom and use it for NES instead. So while I don't plan on listing purchase options for NES CIB in both trad cardboard and bitbox, I'll be able to swap trad cardboard for bitbox NES CIB on request.

Long story short, default checkout options for CIB will be traditional cardboard for 72pin NES, and bitbox for 60pin famicom. But if you request NES CIB in bitbox at time of purchase, I can do that too. I'll get input from contributor's on what they'd like for their copy prior to shipment.